









0< v 













ORIGINS OF THE TRIPLE 
ALLIANCE 



University of Virginia 
Barbour-Page Foundation 

ORIGINS OF THE TRIPLE 
ALLIANCE 



THREE LECTURES 

BY 

ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1919 



CI 



M 






Copyright, 1917, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published July, 1917 




PREFACE 

In January, 1916, I had the honor and 
the pleasure of giving the Barbour-Page 
lectures for that year at the University of 
Virginia. The substance of those lec- 
tures is reproduced in this little volume, 
though there have been many changes in 
the form besides the addition of foot- 
notes. Any one who wishes to under- 
stand even in a superficial way the causes 
that have brought about the present 
world conflict should familiarize himself 
with the history of Europe since the 
Franco-Prussian War, and should try to 
grasp the interplay of political forces, the 
aims of statesmen, and the aspirations of 
peoples during that period. For the 
greater part of the time the so-called 
Triple Alliance was the strongest political 
and military element in the international 
situation. Its friends declared that it was 
an element for peace; its enemies regarded 



vi PREFACE 

it as a conservative league to protect ill- 
gotten gains. Although it dissolved when 
brought to the touchstone of actual war, 
its importance as an international factor 
for many years makes it well worth our 
study. In the following three chapters I 
have tried to point out the causes, per- 
sonal as well as international, that led 
to its formation. I have not made any 
startling discoveries, nor have I new the- 
ories to put forth, but I believe I have 
made use of the best accessible informa- 
tion. Instead of St. Petersburg I ought 
perhaps to have used the name Petrograd, 
and I should have done so in speaking of 
current affairs, but for those of the past 
it still seems permissible to keep to the 
older form. For the sake of brevity and 
smoothness I have often used the word 
Austria where Austria-Hungary or the 
Dual Empire would have been more cor- 
rect; but this, also, is, I think, condoned 
by current usage. 

June, 1917. 



ORIGINS OF THE TRIPLE 
ALLIANCE 



THE ORIGINS OF THE 
TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

CHAPTER I 

On May 10, 1871, the Peace of Frank- 
fort was signed between the new French 
republic and the still newer German em- 
pire. This date may be regarded as 
marking, in the conventional way that 
dates do, the termination not only of 
a great and dramatic war, but also of 
a period of European history. With 
the complete triumph of Germany over 
France, accompanied by the overthrow 
of what a few years before had seemed 
the brilliantly successful government of 
Napoleon III, with the proclamation at 
Versailles of William of Prussia as Ger- 
man emperor, with the entry of the 
Italian troops into Rome, and the ex- 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



tinction of the age-long temporal sov- 
ereignty of the Pope, Europe had within 
a few months undergone such changes as 
to constitute the end of an epoch and 
the beginning of a new one. This new 
epoch, which closes with the war of 19 14, 
may be described as that of the ascen- 
dancy of Germany. 

The Europe of 1871 was represented 
and controlled, as it had been for cen- 
turies, by certain great powers, jealous 
indeed of one another and often in disa- 
greement, but whose collective decision 
once reached was in practice binding 
upon the rest of the continent. The 
composition of the group had varied 
from time to time, and the relative 
strength and influence of the different 
members had been subject to continual 
readjustment. They were six in number. 
One of them, united Italy, had only just 
come into existence and was hardly rec- 
ognized by the rest as quite an equal. 
Imperial Germany, on the other hand, 



THE GREAT POWERS 



was a political outgrowth of the kingdom 
of Prussia, which had been a power for 
more than a century, and now in its new 
form, crowned with a halo of victories, it 
had stepped from the last to the first 
place among the great European states. 
Three of the others, Russia, Austria, and 
France, had been severely defeated in 
war in the course of the last twenty years, 
and of these none so disastrously as 
France. 

Ever since the days of Richelieu, for 
well over two centuries, France had been, 
with occasional eclipses, the first power 
in the world. One coalition after an- 
other had been necessary to check the 
ambitions of Louis XIV. The last and 
most formidable of all, though its armies, 
led by Marlborough and Eugene, hum- 
bled his pride and exhausted his resources, 
did not succeed in preventing him from 
seating his grandson on the throne of 
Spain. Even the fatal reign of Louis XV, 
with its loss of colonial empires in North 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



America and India, was marked by the 
widest supremacy of the French language 
and of French ideas. Politically, too, 
France soon began to recover under his 
successor and enjoyed a partial revenge 
on England in the war of American inde- 
pendence. Then followed the victories of 
the Revolution, and the unexampled glo- 
ries of the Napoleonic empire, when the 
conquering soldiers of France entered the 
gates of Berlin and Vienna, of Rome and 
of Madrid and of Moscow. When at last 
the tide turned and she was vanquished 
by combined Europe, only a few years of 
rest were necessary for her before she 
again began to assert herself. A genera- 
tion later, under Napoleon III, she was 
victorious in the Crimea and in Italy, 
and once more became the brilliant cen- 
tre of Europe and the leading power in 
international affairs. 

Now all was changed. France had 
been overwhelmingly defeated, this time 
not by a coalition, but by a single foe, in 



THE DEFEAT OF FRANCE 



a war into which she had entered 'with a 
light heart' and in which she had lost 
every important battle. A large part of 
her territory had been overrun, her capi- 
tal had been entered by the victorious 
enemy, she had had imposed upon her 
the payment of an indemnity such as had 
never been heard of in history. She was 
deprived of her eastern provinces, Alsace 
and part of Lorraine, with some 1,600,000 
people, and she was left with a disad- 
vantageous frontier unfortified against a 
neighbor who had just given such fearful 
evidence of his power. As a crowning 
humiliation, she had to retake Paris itself 
from the anarchistic government of the 
Commune amid wild scenes of bloodshed, 
and this under the very eyes of the Ger- 
mans. In the midst of these disasters 
she met with little compassion from the 
outside world. Sympathy is the last 
thing a vanquished nation may expect to 
find, especially if it has excited envy in 
the past. Instead, it is assured that it 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



has merited its fate by its faults, which 
are pointed out to it with unsparing 
frankness. 

When we add to all this the fact that in 
1 87 1 the government of France was con- 
fessedly only provisional, and the existing 
republican form did not appear to satisfy 
the wishes of the majority of the people, 
though there was no telling just what 
they did want, and finally when we re- 
member that her birth rate had long been 
declining and was lower than that of any 
other country in Europe, we can see rea- 
son enough for the widespread belief that 
her sun had set and that henceforth she 
must content herself with a secondary 
place among nations. In any event, it 
was hard to conceive that she could ever 
again be the first state on the continent. 

History records with admiration the 
way in which the French people and their 
rulers met and overcame the innumerable 
difficulties that beset them, and in a sur- 
prisingly short time brought order out of 



THE RECOVERY OF FRANCE 



chaos. Their most immediate and press- 
ing task was the payment of the war in- 
demnity, in order to obtain liberation of 
French territory from the burden and 
shame of foreign occupation. The huge 
sums necessary for the purpose were 
raised with a promptness that astonished 
the world, and made the Germans regret 
that they had not insisted on obtaining 
more. Then followed the painful process 
of recovery from the wounds inflicted by 
the war, the arduous work of reconstruc- 
tion, and especially the reconstitution of 
the military strength of the country. 
Not only did the building of a new chain 
of fortresses on the exposed frontier cost 
by itself many hundred million francs, 
but the army had to be reorganized and 
reenforced from top to bottom. Here, 
too, the progress was soon such as to pro- 
voke disquiet, not to say irritation, on the 
part of the watchful neighbor to the east. 
The question as to the final form of the 
government of France remained open for 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



some years, but in the meanwhile the 
republicans, at first a minority in the na- 
tion and a still smaller one among its 
leading men, steadily gained ground. 
The Conservatives, even after they had 
brought about the fall of President Thiers, 
were too divided among themselves to 
profit by the majority they had in the 
chambers, and in the end, against their 
wills, they voted a republican constitu- 
tion. 

These circumstances imperatively de- 
manded that the energies of France 
should be devoted to internal affairs. In 
consequence, the foreign policy of the 
third republic was at first cautious, not 
to say timorous, in the extreme, being 
dominated by fear of Germany and by 
the necessity of avoiding complications 
of all kinds until the country should have 
recovered its strength. This was no 
time for France to take the initiative in 
international questions, or, indeed, to do 
much of anything, except keep on good 



ITALY 



terms with other powers, and, if she 
could not make friends, at least avoid 
giving offence. 

Her Latin sister, the young kingdom 
of Italy, was equally timid. Italian 
unity had been achieved in large part 
thanks to the assistance of stronger na- 
tions, and thanks also to their quarrels 
with one another. The coping stone of 
the edifice, the acquisition of Rome as a 
capital, had only been possible owing to 
the withdrawal of the French army of 
occupation after the first Prussian vic- 
tories. This passing of the Eternal City 
from the hands of the papacy, which had 
ruled it for so many centuries, had created 
a painful impression in the Catholic 
world. It was, indeed, no secret that not 
only in Austria and Germany, but also 
among the Conservatives in France, there 
were not a few who openly advocated the 
restoration of the temporal authority of 
the Pope, and were willing to use force to 
bring this about. The fear of such inter- 



io THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

vention was for many years a controlling 
element in Italian foreign policy, and 
combined with a sense of the weakness 
and the backwardness of the new kingdom 
to make its statesmen eminently cautious. 
The Italians still professed their gratitude 
for the aid France had given them on the 
field of battle, but they were disposed to 
claim that she had repaid herself by her 
annexation of Nice and Savoy, an act 
which they still resented. They had not 
forgotten the French occupation of Rome, 
and they feared the advent to power of 
the clerical party in Paris. They were 
also beginning to entertain ambitions of a 
Mediterranean empire, ambitions which 
could not fail to bring them some day 
into disagreement if not actual collision 
with their former benefactor. Austria 
they regarded as a one-time hated op- 
pressor, who still held Italians under her 
rule, and was capable at any moment of 
again menacing Italian unity and inde- 
pendence. 



ENGLAND 



Of the great European powers, Eng- 
land was the one that had been least af- 
fected by the recent convulsions on the 
continent; indeed, her position in the 
world had long been subject to fewer 
variations than that of others. In the 
course of the last four hundred years, 
though often at war, she had met with but 
one serious defeat, the war of American 
independence. Even then, heavy as her 
losses had been, they had brought little 
direct gain to her rivals. England had 
never dominated Europe, but she had al- 
ways been a power of the first rank which 
continental statesmen could not safely 
leave out of account, though they some- 
times affected to do so. She had reached 
her highest point relatively in 1815, after 
her triumph over Napoleon, whom she 
had opposed so long, often single-handed. 
In Nelson she had possessed perhaps the 
greatest of all admirals, in Wellington she 
had the one general who had been uni- 
formly victorious over the French, and it 



12 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

was her troops that had borne the brunt 
of the fray in the crowning victory of 
Waterloo. At that time she was not only 
the first but in fact the only great mari- 
time and colonial power; indeed, Britan- 
nia ruled the waves more completely then 
than ever before or since. In mechanical 
invention, too, and in industrial progress, 
she led mankind. 

Since those days, however, her prestige 
and political influence had somewhat 
waned. It was not that Great Britain 
had not made satisfactory progress. On 
the contrary, in population, in industrial 
development, in commerce, in wealth, she 
had advanced without halt, and she had 
added steadily to her vast colonial em- 
pire. Nevertheless, her position in the 
world, if imposing, was no longer com- 
manding. Although she still held the 
first place economically, other nations also 
had modern industries and extensive sea- 
going commerce. The British navy was 
still the strongest in existence, but France 



THE DECLINE OF BRITISH PRESTIGE 13 

and the United States possessed powerful 
fleets. British troops had won many vic- 
tories over Orientals and savages, but 
such successes have never made much 
impression on foreign military opinion, 
and in the Crimean war, the one struggle 
where the English had had to face Euro- 
pean opponents, though they fought with 
their usual bravery, they did not display 
equal competence, and in the later stages 
they were completely cast into the shade 
by the superior achievements of their 
French allies. Not many people, even in 
England, remember the name of the Eng- 
lish general in command when Sebastopol 
fell. On the continent there was a ten- 
dency to depreciate the British army, and 
to regard it as something good enough 
against enemies of inferior civilization, 
but not the equal of troops trained to 
meet more scientific foes. 

In the ten years preceding 1871, Eng- 
land had several times been on the verge 
of war with other great powers — with the 



14 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

United States over the Trent affair and 
over the question of the Confederate 
cruisers, with Russia over the Polish in- 
surrection of 1863, and with the German 
states over the Schleswig-Holstein ques- 
tion. In the Trent affair, the demand of 
England had been acceded to, but in the 
other cases she had suffered some hu- 
miliation. She was still harassed by the 
question of the Alabama claims, which, 
as later arbitrated, ended in a triumph 
for the United States; she had encouraged 
the Polish revolt by joint diplomatic in- 
tervention with France in its behalf, but 
as she was unwilling to go to the point of 
war, she had to submit to being severely 
snubbed by Russia, while the Poles were 
in the end left worse off than ever; and in 
the question of Schleswig-Holstein, she 
had likewise failed altogether to make 
good her words by action. Of late, espe- 
cially since the disappearance from the 
scene of the bumptious figure of Lord 
Palmerston, the foreign policy of England 



ENGLISH FOREIGN POLICY 15 

had been unaggressive and inclined to 
mind its own business. 

During the Franco-Prussian war Eng- 
lish public opinion had been in the main 
favorable to the Germans. This was not 
due to any especial love for them, though 
there was much respect for Prussia, but 
Englishmen had sympathized with the 
achievement of German unity, and for 
some years they had disliked and dis- 
trusted their former ally, Emperor Napo- 
leon III. The way, too, in which the war 
had apparently been brought about had 
prejudiced many against France, as had 
Bismarck's timely revelations of French 
desires for the acquisition of Belgium. 
The first victories of the German armies 
were, therefore, generally applauded. It 
is true that, after the overthrow of 
the Second Empire, the heroic efforts of 
France to retrieve her desperate fortunes 
and the severity of the terms of peace 
imposed upon her produced a certain 
reaction in her favor, but, as a whole, 



i6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

English feeling toward the new German 
empire was one of cordiality and frank 
admiration. There seemed to be no im- 
portant matters about which the interests 
of the two peoples were likely to conflict, 
and the relations between the two courts 
were intimate. Prince Albert of Saxe- 
Coburg, the beloved husband of Queen 
Victoria, had been a patriotic German, 
and their daughter was now married to 
Crown Prince Frederick, the heir to the 
new imperial throne. 

The only power which England viewed 
with suspicion and hostility was Russia; 
indeed, there had been little improvement 
in the relations between the two countries 
since the Crimean war. The events con- 
nected with the Polish insurrection, the 
renewal of Russian activity in Asia, and 
particularly the repudiation by Russia of 
the article in the Treaty of Paris that 
limited her freedom of action in the Black 
Sea, had aroused British anger and deep- 
ened British distrust of a state whose de- 



ENGLAND AND RUSSIA 17 

signs were deemed to be full of menace 
to the interests of the British empire. 

Russia under Tsar Alexander II had 
profited by the bitter experiences of the 
Crimean war to put her house in order. 
Public opinion, from the emperor down, 
had realized that the country was in 
need of drastic changes, and that all re- 
forms must be based on the fundamental 
one of the abolition of serfdom. This, 
perhaps the greatest legislative act in the 
history of mankind, had been formally 
proclaimed on March 3, 1861. It had 
been carried out with the enthusiastic 
support of all that was best in the nation 
and had been followed up by the insti- 
tution of provincial councils and by other 
measures of far-reaching importance that 
should help to create a new Russia. But, 
as was inevitable in a work of such mag- 
nitude, there had been numerous mis- 
takes in matters of detail, and the first 
enthusiasm of the public was succeeded 
by disappointment. The government, 



18 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

too, alarmed at some of the results of its 
own policy, had of late grown reactionary, 
and had thereby aroused increasing dis- 
content among the liberal elements of 
society. In her absorption in the work 
of internal regeneration and also in that 
of reconstituting her military strength, 
Russia had for fifteen years withdrawn 
from active participation in international 
questions. She had taken no share in the 
events that led to the liberation of Italy 
and to the unification of Germany. She 
had, it is true, watched with lively satis- 
faction the defeat and humiliation of 
Austria, whose ungrateful hostility at the 
time of the Crimean war she had not 
forgiven. For a while she had seemed 
to seek closer relations with France, but 
the threat of French intervention during 
the Polish insurrection, in contrast with 
the ostentatious friendship of Prussia at 
this juncture, had led to a reawakening of 
Russian nationalism and thrown Alexan- 
der II into the embrace of his kinsman 



RUSSIA AND GERMANY 19 

In Berlin. The Tsar had not only drunk 
to the success of German arms at the 
time of the Franco- Prussian war, he had 
likewise made no secret of the intention 
of Russia to intervene in case Austria 
should ally herself to France. In return, 
Russia, with the complicity of Bismarck, 
had profited by the French disasters to 
abrogate the Black Sea clause in the 
Treaty of Paris in defiance of England 
and Austria, who had protested angrily, 
but in the end could only sanction* what 
they were unable to prevent. In 1871 
official relations between Berlin and St. 
Petersburg were of the most cordial na- 
ture, and personal ones were closer still. 
To be sure, the former friendship of the 
two chancellors, Gorchakov and Bis- 
marck, had cooled down in the course of 
time — neither of the two was sentimental 
in such matters — but real ties of affection 
bound together Tsar Alexander and his 
uncle, Kaiser William. 

* At the London Conference in 1871. 



20 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Austria-Hungary had within a few 
years undergone profound changes, both 
external and internal. When Francis Jo- 
seph had come to the throne on December 
2, 1848, his territories were in the throes 
of revolutions that threatened the very 
existence of his empire. Thanks, how- 
ever, to able generals and ministers, and 
still more thanks to the assistance of Rus- 
sia, he had triumphed over Italians, Hun- 
garians, and other insurgents, and had 
been able to resume his absolute author- 
ity. The German Confederation was re- 
established, with Austria once more as its 
leading member, and presently Russia, an 
all too powerful friend, was defeated in 
the Crimean war, while Austria took the 
opportunity to "astonish the world by 
her ingratitude." But this period of suc- 
cess had been short-lived. In 1859, Aus- 
tria had been expelled by the French from 
Italy, save for the Trentino and the prov- 
ince of Venetia, and had been forced to 
tolerate the growth of a united Italian 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



state. Seven years later, by the battle of 
Sadowa, she lost Venetia, and had also to 
submit to being excluded from Germany, 
to which her own German territories had 
belonged by race and history ever since 
they had come into existence. Her sys- 
tem of centralized despotic rule had now 
broken down, and disaffection was rife 
throughout the empire. 

It was high time for a change of policy. 
The imperial government turned to the 
strongest of the discontented elements, 
the Hungarians, and offered to meet their 
wishes. In the negotiations that ensued 
the Hungarian leaders showed themselves 
much the shrewder of the two parties. 
The agreement reached, the so-called 
Ausgleich, was highly favorable to them, 
for they succeeded in obtaining not only 
a liberal constitution for their kingdom, 
but a complete ascendancy for the Mag- 
yar race over all other elements in it, and 
a reincorporation in it of the province of 
Croatia, thus dividing and weakening the 



22 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

South Slavs. Hungary, though the less 
populous of the two halves of the mon- 
archy, was granted equal rights with 
Austria in every respect, except in the 
language of the army, and she soon ob- 
tained and has kept more than an equal 
influence in the management of foreign 
affairs. The least statesmanlike part of 
the new constitution was the provision 
that the Ausgleich should hold good only 
for periods of ten years at a time, and 
should then be renewed by fresh agree- 
ment. It is in human nature that such 
renewals can only be reached after sharp 
bargaining, and that every ten years the 
Dual Empire is threatened with a crisis. 
Just before the outbreak of the Franco- 
Prussian war, Austria had been in nego- 
tiation with France for an alliance that 
should bring her revenge against Prussia. 
The plan had come to nothing, owing to 
the opposition of the Hungarians, the 
attitude of Russia, and the sudden com- 
pleteness of the German victories. Aus- 



GERMANY 23 



tria quickly saw the error of her ways, and 
was anxious for reconciliation with her 
old rival and recently triumphant foe. 

All that France had lost in the disas- 
trous war of 1870, and more, Germany 
had gained. The position of Napoleon III 
at the height of his fortunes had never ap- 
proached that attained by his victorious 
adversary, William of Prussia, now Ger- 
man emperor. The rank of the Germans 
as one of the great peoples of Europe had 
long been secure. Their achievements in 
many fields ever since they had over- 
thrown the Roman empire had assured 
them a foremost place in the history of 
the world, and though after the close of 
their period of splendid accomplishments 
in the middle ages they had lost their po- 
litical eminence, they had given repeated 
proof of their vitality and genius. Dur- 
ing the last hundred years they had gained 
fresh distinction in many fields of human 
endeavor. German literature could show 
names that rivalled any in the literature 



24 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

of England or of France; German music 
had surpassed the glory of the Italian; 
German philosophy, with its cluster of 
celebrities of the first rank, had not been 
equalled since the days of ancient Greece; 
German science had already come to be 
regarded as second to none; German uni- 
versities, as the models of learning and 
advanced thought, were attracting stu- 
dents from all over the civilized world. 
Even German military prestige, some- 
what tarnished with time, had received 
fresh lustre from the exploits of Frederick 
the Great. Since his day, however, it had 
hardly gained, for Waterloo, where the 
English had done most of the fighting, did 
not more than efface the memories of 
Jena, and the Germans as a whole had 
the reputation of being not so much a 
people of soldiers as of thinkers and poets. 
In one respect Germany had been for 
centuries a conspicuous failure. Her peo- 
ple, though not devoid of national feeling 
and pride, had long seemed unable to form 



GERMANY 35 



any real political union. Her magnificent 
empire of the middle ages had disinte- 
grated into a mass of disjointed frag- 
ments, many of them ridiculously small, 
and tempting to the cupidity of their 
neighbors. The wars of the French Rev- 
olution had, indeed, swept most of these 
petty states into the melting-pot, and the 
final rising against Napoleon had taken 
on the character of a true national move- 
ment, but the hopes of patriots had been 
bitterly disappointed after the overthrow 
of the oppressor. Left to themselves, 
that is to say, to their governments, the 
Germans had been able only to produce 
a confederation helpless for any effective 
purpose, and one whose two chief mem- 
bers watched each other with constant 
jealousy and seldom combined except to 
put pressure on the others. The story 
of the abortive^ risings of 1848, and the 
lamentable fiasco of the Parliament of 
Frankfort appeared to set the seal on 
German political incapacity. 



26 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Now all was changed. Prussia in six 
years had fought three successful wars. 
The first of these, it is true, had been 
against so weak a foe that it could bring 
but little glory, but in the second Austria 
had been defeated in six weeks, and in the 
third two great French armies had been 
forced to surrender, others had been re- 
peatedly defeated, Paris had had to yield 
to a siege, and at Versailles, in the halls 
that had witnessed the splendors of Louis 
XIV, there had been proclaimed a new 
German empire, which seemed to rec- 
oncile the conflicting claims of the au- 
tonomy of the smaller states and of the 
necessary predominance of Prussia, the 
principle of a strong monarchical author- 
ity and a modern parliament based on 
universal suffrage. The political achieve- 
ment was as remarkable as the military. 
No wonder that the world was filled with 
astonishment and admiration. "Eu- 
rope," it was said, "has lost a mistress 
and got a master." * Not only was the 

*Morley's Gladstone, ii, p. 357. 



BISMARCK 27 



victorious German army without ques- 
tion the most powerful in existence and 
under the command of the first general in 
Europe, but the destinies of the new em- 
pire were directed by the great statesman 
who had forged it 'with blood and iron/ 
Prince Otto von Bismarck. 

In 1 87 1, the German chancellor was 
fifty-six years of age. Though somewhat 
fatigued by his labors, he was at the 
height of his extraordinary intellectual 
powers. Since the days of the first Na- 
poleon, no man in Europe had been so 
feared and admired. Even his enemies — 
and he had many of them — did not ven- 
ture to question his genius. His domi- 
nant personality, his gift of caustic ex- 
pression, the apparent reckless frankness, 
nay, the very brutality of his utterances, 
fascinated and subjugated those with 
whom he came into contact. Born for 
strife, he passionately resented opposi- 
tion, and was a good hater who seldom 
forgot an injury. The difficulties he had 
to overcome in winning over his master 



28 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

to his opinions — for William of Hohen- 
zollern, who took a serious view of his 
rights and duties as a sovereign, was not 
easy to convince — and the resistance that 
he not infrequently met with at the hands 
of the parties in the Reichstag, or of the 
military authorities, or of hostile influ- 
ences at court, at times so irritated Bis- 
marck's nerves as to menace a breakdown 
of his health and render intercourse with 
him difficult. Ever and anon he would 
threaten to resign; but, except at certain 
critical moments, we may question the 
seriousness of his intention. His master, 
though sometimes angry enough with 
him, recognized the immense services that 
he had rendered, and had no thought of 
letting him go. 

Like other statesmen of the first rank, 
Bismarck followed in the main a simple 
policy, even if his contemporaries could 
not be expected to realize this. He was 
infinitely resourceful in detail, keeping 
open various possibilities and ready to 



BISMARCK 29 



change on the instant, if need be, from 
one course of action to another; he was 
never off his guard, and was constantly 
puzzling and bewildering his opponents; 
but at bottom his aims and ambitions 
were not complicated. Now that Ger- 
man unity had been achieved in the form 
he desired, with Prussian supremacy and 
the exclusion of Austria, now that France 
had been defeated and deprived of her 
German territories, he regarded his crea- 
tion as complete. Henceforth it was not 
his object to add to the stately fabric he 
had erected. He confined himself to 
strengthening it and to putting it in a 
position to weather future storms. He 

to win over the discontented elements, to 
stimulate its economic development, to 
keep up its military strength at the high- 
est point of efficiency, but there is no 
proof that he seriously harbored designs 
of further extending its borders. Here 



strove to consolidate the new empire, to 
make its inhabitants feel its advantages, 



3 o THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

we have one of his remarkable character- 
istics. In spite of successes sufficient to 
turn the coolest head, his ambitions re- 
mained what they had been, and in spite 
of the aggressiveness of his manner and 
the roughness, if need be, of his means, 
he was essentially a moderate as well as 
a conservative. The most famous proof 
of this in his career was his single-handed 
opposition to the desire of the king and 
of the whole Prussian army to exact ter- 
ritory from Austria after the victory of 
Sadowa. By a desperate effort he had tri- 
umphed, and his countrymen have since 
been unanimous in recognizing the ex- 
traordinary wisdom of his views on this 
occasion. Toward France he did not dis- 
play and could not be expected to display 
the same moderation, but he had serious 
doubts as to the advisability of taking the 
French part of Lorraine. In this case he 
yielded to the arguments of the military 
authorities, perhaps thinking that as 
France would be irreconcilable anyway, 



BISMARCK si 



it was needless to try to conciliate her. 
Even admitting that his imagination may 
occasionally have played with the possi- 
bility of fresh conquests,* the policy he 
followed in his later years was one of 
peace. As a statesman he belonged to 
the school of Frederick the Great and of 
Talleyrand, not to that of Napoleon. He 
lacked, indeed, a certain kind of imagina- 
tion, and this sometimes prevented his 
understanding the forces opposed to him. 
Thus in the famous Kulturkampf, which 
was soon to break out, he long failed to 
grasp the real strength of the modern 

* Beust, Aus drei Viertel-J ahrhunderten, ii, pp. 480, 48 1 . (At 
Gastein, August, 1871): "We also spoke of the German prov- 
inces of Austria, and Prince Bismarck strongly disclaimed any 
desire of acquiring these provinces for the German Em- 
pire. ... I do not question the sincerity of these objections, 
but I cannot forget another circumstance in connection with 
this subject. 'I would rather,' Bismarck told me, 'annex 
Holland to Germany.' When I entered, some months later, 
on my post as ambassador in London, the new Dutch am- 
bassador, with whom I had formerly been acquainted, arrived 
at the same time. He had hitherto been ambassador in 
Berlin. The first thing he told me was that Bismarck had 
reassured him as to the rumor that Germany wished to annex 
Holland, by saying that he would greatly prefer the German 
provinces of Austria." 



32 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Catholic church. When he did make the 
discovery, he extricated himself with his 
usual skill from a situation that had 
grown too difficult. In spite of brave 
words, he ended by going to Canossa, but 
he did not do so until he had assured 
himself of a very different reception 
from Henry IV's, and of picking up a 
good many advantages from the journey. 
Though a conservative and an aristocrat, 
he took the initiative in legislation to 
ameliorate the condition of the laboring 
classes, and set an example to Europe for 
measures of state socialism; but he re- 
garded the socialists themselves with the 
most narrow-minded intolerance. Geo- 
graphically, his outlook was limited, reach- 
ing little beyond the European continent. 
Even England he never completely under- 
stood, and he looked on the Eastern Ques- 
tion as one that did not touch Germany 
directly and that, therefore, she should 
keep out of. For lands farther away he 
cared nothing at all. Great as he was, he 



BISMARCK 33 



was not in his visions ahead of his times; 
indeed, if anything, he rather lagged be- 
hind them. He had treated the Great 
Germany idea of 1848 as a foolish Uto- 
pia, and he never foresaw that the gen- 
eration after his own would come to feel 
that the German unity he had founded 
was not complete when it left twenty 
million Germans outside of its domain. 
Nor did he realize that the industrial de- 
velopment of the empire which he favored 
and stimulated, breaking a few years later 
with his liberal supporters and turning 
from Free Trade to Protection, would 
with its vast increase of German com- 
merce and shipping lead to the building 
up of a large navy. He believed such a 
navy to be a useless and dangerous lux- 
ury. In his old age he yielded to a public 
opinion that had gone beyond him, and 
entered upon a policy of the acquisition 
of German colonies, but although in the 
diplomatic controversies to which his ac- 
tion gave rise he held his own with his 



34 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

accustomed skill and aggressiveness, he 
had no ambition for a colonial empire; he 
only cared for trading-posts, and he 
grudged expense even for them. 

In 1 87 1 the relations of Germany with 
the other European powers were in the 
main satisfactory. England Bismarck 
did not like, and he resented British influ- 
ence at the German court, as represented 
particularly by the Crown Princess of 
Prussia. In discussions with England his 
tone was frequently sharp rather than 
conciliatory, and he regarded her as being 
too much interested in her commerce and 
in her colonial affairs, and too unreliable 
under democratic influences, to be a state 
that could be counted upon. At the 
same time he did not feel that her inter- 
ests were antagonistic to those of Ger- 
many, and would have deemed a serious 
quarrel with her to be unnecessary and 
foolish. With Russia Germany was on 
intimate terms, even if the personal rela- 
tions between the two chancellors were 



BISMARCK 



35 



perhaps not quite so friendly as they once 
had been. With Austria the first steps 
to a reconciliation had already been 
taken; with Italy there was no cause for 
dispute. The one land whose enmity 
must be accepted as a permanent fact and 
appreciated accordingly was France. 

With his usual sound judgment, Prince 
Bismarck realized that France could not 
be expected to forgive and forget the war 
of 1870. Her loss in prestige and position 
were in themselves hard enough for a 
proud nation to bear, though time might 
heal the ordinary wounds of the conflict, 
including in this case the payment of a 
huge war indemnity. But the loss of 
Alsace-Lorraine was not a thing that a 
people like the French could accept as 
final, at least for a generation, and as 
long as it was not accepted there would 
always be Frenchmen who would wish to 
seize the first favorable opportunity for a 
guerre de revanche. This being so, Bis- 
marck wasted no time in laments or illu- 



36 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

sions, but faced the situation and shaped 
his plans accordingly. He was willing, 
when it suited his purposes, to assume a 
polite, nay, even a benevolent, attitude 
toward France, though often his tone was 
much the reverse, but as she was always 
a possible enemy, his policy was in the 
first place to keep her weak and occupied 
with home affairs, and in the second to 
keep her isolated. 

With these objects in view, he favored 
for France a republic as the form of gov- 
ernment that would suit him best. Court 
circles in Berlin, like the rest of aristo- 
cratic and conservative Europe, would 
have preferred to see a Bourbon or an 
Orleans prince restored to the French 
throne, but such sentimentality did not 
affect Bismarck. He believed that a 
French republic would be weak and prob- 
ably distracted, therefore not in a posi- 
tion to desire a war, still less to carry one 
on successfully, whereas a prince, whether 
a Bourbon or an Orleans or a Bonaparte, 



BISMARCK 37 



would feel the need of strengthening his 
position by gaining the prestige which 
only a successful war could give him. 
Undeterred, therefore, by court influ- 
ences, the chancellor showed himself 
friendly toward the French republicans, 
and he even seems to have had a liking for 
his old acquaintance, President Thiers. 
When the German ambassador in Paris, 
Count Harry von Arnim, attempted a 
policy of his own not in accordance with 
the prescribed one, he was recalled from 
his post, tried on a charge of retaining 
state papers in his own possession, and 
his career was blasted. 

But there was a still stronger reason 
why Bismarck wished to see a republican 
government in France. He was con- 
vinced that a republic would find it much 
more difficult than a monarchy to secure 
alliances with the other great states of 
the continent, all of which were monar- 
chies. As against France alone, the Ger- 
man empire bade fair to be able hence- 



3 8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

forth to hold its own. It was already the 
stronger power of the two, and, owing to 
the difference in birth rate, the disparity 
between them would become steadily 
greater. What he feared was an anti- 
German coalition, and almost any com- 
bination of this kind appeared to him 
conceivable. To the world at large such 
a danger might appear remote enough. 
The German empire was not only so for- 
midable that no other country would 
lightly dream of attacking it, it was also 
on better terms with the others than was 
its weak, distracted neighbor. But this 
was not enough for Bismarck. Some 
years later, in answer to the charge, "You 
have the nightmare of coalitions," he said, 
"Yes, necessarily." * He remembered 
that even the genius of Frederick the 
Great would not have sufficed to save 
Prussia in the Seven Years' war but for 
the timely death of the most dangerous 

* Conversation with Count P. Shuvalov. Gedanken und 
Erinnerungen, ii, p. 224. 



BISMARCK 39 



of the king's enemies, the Empress Eliza- 
beth. And a new alliance of these same 
powers — Russia, Austria, and France — 
that had so nearly brought Prussia to de- 
struction in the eighteenth century, was 
not unthinkable against Germany in the 
nineteenth. Nor was this the only peril. 
In 1870 Austria and Italy had both 
been disposed to draw the sword against 
Prussia. A little more diplomatic skill 
and willingness to make concessions on 
the part of Napoleon III, or a French 
victory or two at the outset of the war, 
might well have led to a triple alliance 
with which even the armies of von Moltke 
would have found it difficult to cope, ex- 
cept, perhaps, with Russian assistance, an 
assistance that would have had to be paid 
for some day. It was true that since Ger- 
many had triumphed, Austria and Italy 
had hastened to express their friendliness 
and to put far from them all thoughts 
of hostility. Bismarck's old antagonist, 
Count Beust, was now anxious to be his 



4 o THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

friend. But the chancellor had a good 
memory, and he looked further ahead than 
the mere present, however glorious. The 
friends of today had been the enemies of 
yesterday, and might be the enemies 
of tomorrow. No precautions could be 
too great in such vital matters. At the 
time these fears appeared without foun- 
dation, but the events of recent years 
have shown their extraordinary fore- 
sight. 

The policy of Bismarck, accordingly, 
was to keep France isolated by every 
means at his command, both direct and 
indirect. Whether he happened to be on 
bad terms with the government at Paris 
and addressing it in a menacing tone, or 
whether he seemed indifferent and openly 
contemptuous, or whether he was just 
then conciliatory and willing to do favors, 
he never relaxed in his efforts to prevent 
the republic from finding an ally in any 
other great power. Circumstances aided 
him, and as long as he remained at the 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 41 

helm, France did not succeed in emerging 
from her isolation. 

The obvious way for Germany to avoid 
all danger of a hostile coalition was to 
become, herself, a member of some alli- 
ance so strong that it would have noth- 
ing to fear from any number of foes. In 
the memory of men then living, there had 
been a league which, after it had over- 
thrown the Corsican conqueror of Europe, 
had dominated the continent and had 
maintained law and order often by the 
mere terror of its name and the knowl- 
edge of the immense forces at its disposal 
The union of Russia, Austria, and Prus- 
sia, given a mystical consecration in 1815 
by the so-called Holy Alliance, had lasted 
for more than a generation. There had 
been occasional friction between its mem- 
bers, and even an interruption of good re- 
lations in 1829, owing to divergences over 
the Eastern Question, but the Revolution 
of 1830 in Paris had brought the three con- 
servative powers together once more, and 



42 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

they lived in substantial harmony until 
the outbreak of the Crimean war. Since 
that event, to be sure, intercourse be- 
tween Austria and Russia had been 
devoid of cordiality, and Prussia and 
Austria had actually fought against one 
another in 1866, but first Russia and 
then Austria had had her lesson and had 
learned by it. In the defeat and humilia- 
tion of Austria, Russia had her revenge for 
Austrian ingratitude, which she was now 
willing to forget. Austria, on her part, 
after her own disasters and that of France, 
was in a somewhat perilous position, in 
view of the permanent ill will of Italy and 
the close friendship between Berlin and 
St. Petersburg. The counsel of wisdom 
suggested that she should break with the 
past, and, frankly accepting her present 
situation, should forgive and forget what- 
ever grievances she had entertained against 
her two former partners. Instead, there- 
fore, of showing resentment when the 
new empire was proclaimed at Versailles, 



LEAGUE OF THE THREE EMPERORS 43 

Austria gave assurances of her entire sat- 
isfaction and of her desire to be on the 
best of terms with the Germany to, which 
she had ceased to belong. 

This was what Bismarck wanted, and 
he now reaped the reward for his modera- 
tion in 1866. No other combination pos- 
sessed such attractions for him as the 
binding together of the old allies into a 
new League of the Three Emperors. For, 
as long as this league should last, French 
schemes of a revanche would be innocuous. 
It would represent, too, not merely a vast 
military force, but, as in the past, a 
grouping of the conservatives of Europe. 
And Bismarck, like his master, was thor- 
oughly conservative. He had never at 
heart renounced the principles which as a 
Prussian Junker he had proudly defended 
in his early days. Even if he had more 
than once made use of revolutionary 
forces when they suited his purposes and 
had accepted universal suffrage as part of 
the foundations of the new German em- 



44 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

pire, to the great realist these were but 
means to his ends, and he used them 
without scruple when convenient. None 
the less, he remained a conservative. 
He could maintain good relations with 
republics, nay, he preferred one in France, 
but his natural friends were the cham- 
pions of the altar and the throne, the long- 
established guardians of law and order, 
the governments that ruled their people, 
not those that were ruled by them.* It 
seemed wise, too, in view of the recent 
alarming growth of international social- 
ism, for the conservative powers of Eu- 
rope to forget their dissensions and once 
more emphasize the solidarity of their 
permanent interests. 

On August ii, 1871, at Ischl in Austria, 
the German emperor paid a visit to Em- 
peror Francis Joseph. A few days later 
their chancellors, Prince Bismarck and 
Count Beust, came together in confer- 
ence and discussed the relations of the 

* Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 229. 



ANDRASSY 45 



two empires, and interchanged expres- 
sions of mutual good will. But the feud 
between the two men in the past had been 
too bitter for them to have any real con- 
fidence in one another. It was only when 
Beust, the Saxon, had been succeeded as 
foreign minister for the Dual Empire by 
Andrassy, the Magyar, that intimate re- 
lations became possible between the Ball- 
platz and Wilhelmstrasse. In his earlier 
years, Count Julius Andrassy had been 
officially hanged in effigy as a rebel and 
traitor. He was now the representative 
of the triumph of Hungary as well as of 
the new direction of Austrian policy. In 
1870, when Hungarian prime minister, he 
had strongly opposed Austrian participa- 
tion in the war between Prussia and 
France. He was also on good personal 
terms with Bismarck. We have it on his 
own authority that from the start he 
aimed at obtaining for Austria admission 
as a third party into the intimacy that 
existed between Russia and Germany, 



46 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

and then at the gradual supplanting of 
Russia in German good graces.* 

But even before the fall of Beust, the 
next step had been taken toward draw- 
ing together the two empires. On Sep- 
tember 7 Emperor Francis Joseph re- 
turned at Salzburg the visit that had been 
paid him at Ischl. Etiquette demanded 
that the next visit should be paid by the 
Austrian emperor in Germany, and policy 
required that it should be in Berlin, the 
capital now not only of William the 
Prussian king, but of William the Ger- 
man emperor. This public tribute to the 
new empire of his Hohenzollern rival 
must have cost not a little to the pride of 
the heir of the Hapsburgs, whose house 
had so long borne the imperial crown. 
But whatever the sacrifice was, Francis 
Joseph resolved to make it. Friendly re- 
lations could be had on no other terms. 
It was arranged, therefore, that he should 
come to Berlin in state, accompanied by 

* Wertheimer, Graf Julius dndrdssy, iii, p. 226. 



THE THREE EMPERORS AT BERLIN 47 

his new foreign minister, who had already 
had a meeting with Bismarck. 

The news of the intended visit may well 
have awakened some apprehension and 
jealousy at St. Petersburg, as perhaps 
foreshadowing a change in Prussian, now 
German, policy. At any rate, it was not 
for the interest of Russia to see herself 
supplanted at Berlin in her position of 
best friend. For this or for other rea- 
sons, Tsar Alexander, when informed offi- 
cially of what was to take place, asked: 
"Why am I not wanted, too?"* Of 
course, there could be but one answer, 
and with all speed he was sent a cordial 
invitation. 

From the 5th to the nth of September, 
1872, the three emperors and their foreign 
ministers met in the German capital amid 
high festival, while Europe looked on 
and wondered what might be the intent 



* The Tsar was urged to take this step in a confidential letter 
he received from his former German teacher, Schneider. It is 
possible that Bismarck instigated the letter. 



48 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

and the scope of their conversations. 
These conversations resulted in a gen- 
eral agreement, but the entente thus 
concluded did not take the form of a 
written alliance. The sovereigns and 
their ministers, instead of formal confer- 
ences, held a number of separate inter- 
views, during which they exchanged ex- 
pressions of good will and assurances of 
mutual support. They also explained 
their policies to one another and made 
clear that there was nothing in the inten- 
tions of any one of them to which the 
others might fairly object. The attitude 
of Austria was naturally more reserved 
than that of Russia and of Germany, for 
she was in the position of a former enemy 
just admitted to the society of two old 
friends.* Nevertheless, the Austrians had 
no cause for complaint in the way they 
were received, and they were, or fancied 
they were, the objects of more popular 
acclamation than the Russians.f 

* Broglie, La Mission de M. de Gontaut-Biron, p. 45. 
f Wertheimer, ii, p. 77. 



GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA 49 

The old league of the three great con- 
servative European states was thus re- 
constituted, more powerful, more impos- 
ing, than ever. Again it dominated the 
continent. Not only was the combined 
strength of its armies incomparably supe- 
rior to any force that could be brought 
against them, but as long as it lasted each 
of its members could feel safe against at- 
tack by land. But there was one very 
important new feature to the league. 
The relative position of the three allies 
had changed profoundly since the days 
they had first gone hand in hand with 
each other. When, in 1815, Tsar Alex- 
ander I had formed the Holy Alliance, 
there was no doubt that he was its most 
powerful sovereign and leading spirit, 
even if in subsequent years he came under 
the influence of the Austrian chancellor, 
Prince Metternich. In the time of Nich- 
olas I the primacy of Russia was clearer 
still, so much so that after 1849 Austria 
and Prussia were almost in a dependent 
position. Prussia, indeed, had through- 



5 o THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

out been the weakest of the three allies, a 
docile follower of the other tv/o; she had 
never taken the lead in their joint policy. 

In 1872 the situation in this respect was 
different. It was evident to the whole 
world that the mightiest of the three em- 
pires was that of Germany and the first of 
their statesmen was the German chan- 
cellor. It was Germany that had brought 
together the other two members of the 
league, and it was in Berlin that the gen- 
eral reconciliation had been effected. 
Whatever else this renewal of former in- 
timacies might mean, it meant without 
question one more brilliant achievement 
for the policy of Prince Bismarck. 

The next few months served to 
strengthen his position even more. In 
May, 1873, together with his sovereign 
and with von Moltke, he paid a visit to 
St. Petersburg, where he found many old 
acquaintances from his days as Prussian 
minister there eleven years before. He 
now came as the lion of the hour, enter- 



BISMARCK AT ST. PETERSBURG 51 

tained and run after by all the highest so- 
ciety of the city. In return he had no 
hesitation in recognizing the debt that he 
and his country owed to Russia, and is 
said to have declared before his depar- 
ture: "Si j'admettais seulement la pensee 
d'etre jamais hostile a TEmpereur et a 
la Russie, je me considererais comme un 
traitre." * His master went even further 
and concluded a treaty of alliance with 
Alexander II, which was countersigned 
by the two field-marshals, von Moltke 
and Bariatinski, but to which Bismarck 
refused to append his signature, giv- 
ing as his excuse that he objected to 
"binding conventions in circumstances 
where there was as yet no positive object 
in view/'f Almost immediately after the 
departure of their German guests, Tsar 
Alexander and Prince Gorchakov went by 
invitation to visit the Vienna Exhibition 
of 1873. Fresh expressions of good will 

* Tatishchev, Alexander II, n, p. 100. 

f Moritz Busch, Bismarck, some Secret Pages, ii, pp. 480, 481. 



52 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

were exchanged, matters of common in- 
terest were discussed in the most amicable 
spirit, and an agreement was concluded 
which may be regarded as a counterpart 
of the one between Russia and Germany 
at St. Petersburg.* Emperor William, 
also, in his turn came to Vienna, and an- 
other distinguished guest appeared in the 
person of Victor Emmanuel, king of the 
Italy so long bitterly hostile to Austria, 
and so recently united at her expense. 
His visit showed at least a desire to estab- 
lish better relations between the two 
states; and as he followed it up with one 
to Berlin, where he met with a cordial 
reception, the Italian kingdom seemed to 
be following in the orbit of the three em- 
pires. Great Britain, though unenthusi- 
astic, was friendly; France could only 
look on, lonely and helpless. 

The diplomatic triumph of Bismarck 
was thus complete, and he could have lit- 
tle to fear from any foreign quarter. At 

* Wertheimer, ii, p. 89. 



THE KULTURKAMPF 53 

home, on the other hand, matters were 
not going to his taste, for he was in the 
thick of a struggle with the Catholic 
church, the so-called Kulturkampf, a con- 
flict into which he had entered without 
realizing the enormous latent power of his 
adversary. The more deeply he became 
involved, the worse became the difficulties 
that it brought upon him, and the less 
the prospect of a satisfactory issue. This 
told upon his nerves. He was also much 
irritated by the opposition he encoun- 
tered in various other quarters, and he 
especially resented the intrigues, real or 
imaginary, spun against him by the 
Empress Augusta and her friends. His 
health, as well as his temper, was affected 
by all this; so that he more than once 
threatened to resign, and perhaps seri- 
ously thought of doing so. 

Meanwhile the rapid recovery of France 
had first astonished and then angered and 
alarmed the Germans. The French had 
paid off their tremendous war indemnity 



54 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

with unexpected facility; and now that 
their territory was evacuated by the en- 
emy, they were building up, in spite of 
the storms of their internal politics, a new 
army on a firmer basis and a larger scale 
than ever before. This army was in- 
tended primarily for purposes of defence 
— French policy in those days was nothing 
if not timid — and it was still no match 
for that of Germany. Nevertheless, this 
too rapid recuperation awakened displea- 
sure and anxiety, especially among the 
German military authorities, who were 
inclined to argue that, however peaceful 
the intentions of France might be for the 
moment, yet, as she had not abandoned 
the hope of getting back Alsace-Lorraine, 
she would profit by the first favorable op- 
portunity to undertake a war of revenge. 
Granting that such was the case, would it 
not be wise for Germany to provoke a 
conflict now, before France had recov- 
ered her full strength or had found an 
ally, and then, after defeating her a second 



THE WAR SCARE OF 1875 55 

time, to impose upon her terms that 
would render her harmless for the future ? 
Such reasoning was not unnatural, and 
there is little question that both at this 
time and later several of the military 
leaders, including von Moltke himself, 
desired another war. On the other hand, 
there is no ground for thinking that the 
emperor had any intentions of the sort. 
He wished to end his days in peace. Bis- 
marck's position is not so clear. Several 
times in his memoirs and elsewhere he 
expressed his disapproval of 'preventive 
wars/ On some other occasions his tone 
was different.* 

Early in 1875, Europe was startled by a 
sudden war scare, an episode whose true 
significance has not been entirely cleared 
up to the present day. In February 



* Denkiourdigkeiten des Fiirsten Hohenlohe-Schillingsjurst, 
ii, p. 107 (February 18, 1874): "Bismarck: 'We want to keep 
the peace; but if France goes on arming so that she is to be 
ready in five years, and bent on war at the end of that time, 
then we will declare war in three years.' This he had told 
them quite plainly." 



56 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Count von Radowitz, one of the trusted 
servants of the chancellor, and newly 
appointed minister to Greece, was des-r 
patched on a special mission to St. Pe- 
tersburg. According to Bismarck's un- 
convincing later explanation, he was sent 
to straighten out certain matters in the 
machinery of the diplomatic relations 
between the two capitals. It has been 
charged, however, and there is reason for 
believing, that the real object of the mis- 
sion was to obtain for Germany, in return 
for a promise of support in the Eastern 
Question, a free hand from Russia in case 
of war against France, but that this object 
was not attained. At any rate, the 
French foreign minister, the Due De- 
cazes, was disturbed, and on March n 
communicated his fears to Lord Lyons, 
the British ambassador in Paris.* On the 
following day the French Chamber voted 
a bill which had been under consideration 
for some time, to add a fourth battalion 

* Lord Newton, Lord Lyons, ii, p. 68. 



THE WAR SCARE OF 187s 57 

to each regiment. It was in vain that 
France declared that her intentions were 
purely defensive and that she was not 
materially increasing her armament; pub- 
lic opinion in Germany was inclined to 
regard the measure as a menacing if not 
hostile act. On the 8th of April the Ber- 
lin Post, a newspaper supposed to be on 
good terms with the authorities, published 
a violent article entitled "War in Sight." 
Three days later the article was repro- 
duced without contradiction by the North 
German Gazette, which, as was well known, 
was often inspired by the foreign office. 
The French government now felt serious 
alarm, an alarm which was heightened by 
the report of the Due de Gontaut-Biron, 
ambassador in Berlin, that in conversa- 
tion with him at a banquet, von Radowitz 
had discussed the ethics of 'preventive 
wars' and had expressed the opinion that 
Germany would be justified on grounds of 
humanity as well as of policy in begin- 
ning hostilities with France instead of 



58 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

waiting until France had recovered 
enough strength to attack with better 
prospect of success. Bismarck later de- 
clared that Radowitz carried his wine 
badly and was in the habit of talking non- 
sense after a banquet, but in view of the 
strict discipline the chancellor kept among 
his subordinates, it is unlikely that one of 
them would venture so far on his own 
authority, and there is no sign that Rad- 
owitz was ever reproved for his loquacity 
on this occasion. Nor were his remarks 
the only ones to cause anxiety. Reports 
came in from several quarters of menacing 
language held by Bismarck, by Moltke, 
and by German diplomats at foreign 
courts. On May 5 Prince Hohenlohe, 
ambassador at Paris, made a formal com- 
munication to the Due Decazes that 'the 
German government was not entirely 
convinced of the inoffensive character 
of the French armaments/ and that 
'the German general staff considers war 
against Germany as the ultimate object 



THE WAR SCARE OF 1875 59 

of those armaments, and so looks forward 
to their consequences/* The chancellor 
was feeling just then particularly harassed 
by various difficulties that beset him, and 
on this account, or as a tactical move and 
means of pressure, on May 4 he asked 
permission of the emperor to retire from 
office to take care of his shattered health. 
The permission was not granted, and was 
hardly meant to be. 

Meanwhile the French had wasted no 
time, but had appealed for support in 
pressing terms at both London and St. 
Petersburg. On April 15 General LeFlo, 
their ambassador in St. Petersburg, had 
communicated his fears and those of his 
government to the Tsar, who had reas- 
sured him and declared that during a 
visit he was about to make to Berlin he 
would clear up everything. England, too, 
promised to add her influence to that of 
Russia to check any hostile designs on the 

*A. Dreux, Dernieres annees de Vambassade en Allemagne 
de M. de Gontaut-Biron, pp. io8> 109. 



60 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

part of Bismarck. On May 6 the London 
Times startled the world by an article, 
based on information secretly furnished 
by the Due Decazes, which revealed to 
the public the gravity of the crisis. The 
storm, however, soon blew over. On 
May 10 Alexander II and Gorchakov ar- 
rived in Berlin. When the Tsar took up 
the matter, Emperor William declared 
emphatically that he had no thought of 
war with France. Bismarck, too, treated 
the whole affair as a newspaper excite- 
ment and a plot on the part of his ene- 
mies to discredit him, but he had to sub- 
mit to being lectured by Gorchakov, and 
had also to listen to official exhortations 
from the British ambassador. He was 
not the man to relish such a lesson, and 
he was further exasperated by a diplo- 
matic circular of Gorchakov announcing 
that "peace is now assured," a bit of 
needless vanity which Bismarck never 
forgave. 

The whole incident of the 'war scare of 



THE WAR SCARE OF 1875 61 

1875' remains mysterious. Most Ger- 
man writers have accepted Bismarck's as- 
surances on the subject. Many French- 
men and some other foreigners have ac- 
cused him of having planned mischief, but 
of having been foiled by the intervention 
of Russia and England.* We may well 
believe that Emperor William was inno- 
cent of warlike intentions at this time, 
but the chancellor was capable of creating 
a situation which would force his master's 
hand. He may have been feeling the pulse 
of France for his own purposes without 
having made up his mind as to his fu- 
ture course of action; he may merely have 
intended to browbeat her; he may, per- 
haps, as was feared in Paris, have thought 
of sending an ultimatum demanding a 
reduction of French armaments, a de- 
mand which the French were determined 

* Sir Charles Dilke, an unusually well informed and com- 
petent observer, declared a dozen years later: "There can be 
no doubt that in 1875, when Russia prevented a war 
between Germany and France, and England took credit for 
having done so, Germany could have crushed her rival.'* 
Present Position of European Politics, p. 37. 



62 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

to refuse at all risks, and which they 
would have regarded as tantamount to a 
declaration of war. The truth will prob- 
ably never be known with certainty. 
What is certain is that at London and 
St. Petersburg (though not at Vienna, 
which maintained an attitude of reserve) 
bbth the sovereigns* and their ministers, 
after first treating French alarms as 
groundless, became convinced that there 
was serious reason for anxiety and acted 
accordingly. Even some persons in Ger- 
many entertained the same fear, among 
them the Crown Prince. f 

Matters soon settled down, and in out- 
ward appearance the League of the Three 
Emperors was unaffected by what had 
passed. In reality, the effects were last- 
ing, especially upon Prince Bismarck. 
To begin with, it had been made clear to 
him that in case of another Franco-Ger- 

* After the incident was closed, Queen Victoria had some 
correspondence with Emperor William on the subject. 

t Mrs. Wemyss, Memoirs and Letters of Sir Robert M&rier, ii, 
P- 3SO. 



GERMANY AND RUSSIA 63 

man war Germany could not count again 
on the moral support or even the inaction 
of Russia, Friendly as Alexander II was 
to Germany, it was, after all, plainly 
against the interest of Russia that France 
should once more be crushed and still 
further weakened. The Tsar had now 
shown that he understood this and wished 
to maintain the existence of France as a 
great power, however inconvenient such 
an existence might be to Germany. Sec- 
ondly, Bismarck was not the man to for- 
get a bad turn and still less a humiliation. 
From now on he bore a grudge against 
his former friend, Prince Gorchakov. 

As long as no serious conflict of interest 
arose between the three imperial partners 
in the League, some divergency of views 
and the personal pique of their ministers 
might not be of consequence.* But who 

* Sir Robert Morier, after seeing Gorchakov at Wildbad in 
June, wrote (Memoirs, ii, p. 362): "It is clear that in the 
'happy family' of the three Kaisers, each of the 'mutual 
friends' is endeavoring to convince the public that he has 
an exclusive monopoly of the affections of No. 3." 



64 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

could tell when such a conflict might 
arise ? There was one domain where 
jealousy between Russia and Austria 
dated back to the early years of the 
eighteenth century, where there was al- 
ways at least latent antagonism between 
them, and where every disturbance of the 
status quo at once threatened to bring 
their interests into sharp collision. Twice 
before in the last fifty years the alliance 
of the conservative powers had been dis- 
rupted by the affairs of Turkey, and now 
once more, in the summer of 1875, came 
the news that a rising had occurred in the 
Turkish province of Herzegovina, and 
that Europe must again face the incalcu- 
lable difficulties and dangers inseparable 
from a reopening of the Eastern Question. 



CHAPTER II 

The Eastern Question, that cause of 
such perplexities to statesmen and of so 
much bloodshed among peoples, may be 
said to have begun with the beginning of 
European history. The story of the hos- 
tility between Europe and Asia, and of the 
struggles for predominance in the lands of 
the eastern Mediterranean, can be traced 
back in the first pages of Herodotus to the 
semi-mythical piratical expeditions that 
culminated in the Trojan war, and it can 
be followed down through the ages to the 
conflict between Austria and Serbia in 
1914, which has involved in its gigantic 
extension one-half the population of the 
world. 

In the course of the centuries the tide 
of conquest has surged to and fro. Per- 
sia invaded Europe but was beaten back; 
Europe, as represented by Alexander of 
6s 



66 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Macedon and later by Rome, overran and 
subdued western Asia, which, with North 
Africa, became part of Europe in history 
and culture and remained so for many 
generations. With the rise of Islam the 
reaction set in. In the seventh century 
the Arabs won back Syria and North 
Africa to Asia, and subjugated Spain and 
even a part of France. In the eleventh, 
the Seljuk Turks broke the power of the 
Byzantine empire and conquered Asia 
Minor. In the fourteenth, the Ottoman 
Turks crossed into Europe, and by the 
middle of the sixteenth they had built up 
a dominion reaching from the Persian 
Gulf almost to the Strait of Gibraltar 
and up into the borders of Austria. 

Then the tide turned once more. The 
Turks, after a last great offensive move- 
ment, which brought their hosts in 1683 
to the walls of Vienna, met with defeat 
there at the hands of the Polish king, 
John Sobieski. This disaster was quickly 
followed by others, and by the time of the 



THE DECLINE OF TURKEY 67 

Peace of Passarowitz, in 171 8, after an- 
other calamitous war with Austria, the 
Ottoman empire from being a terror to 
its neighbors bade fair to become their 
prey. Already, two centuries ago, peo- 
ple were talking of its extinction in 
Europe as a likely event of the near 
future. 

With the decline of the power of the 
Turks, which has continued with little 
interruption to the present day, and has 
been marked by oft-repeated loss of terri- 
tory, the Eastern Question entered into 
a new phase. It has not been confined to 
the relations between them and the vari- 
ous claimants to their heritage. The re- 
lations of those claimants to one another 
have played an equal and often greater 
part. By an extraordinary historical co- 
incidence, the years in which the Turks 
were first being defeated and shorn of 
lands they were never to regain, witnessed 
also the sudden appearance upon the 
scene of European politics of a new state 



68 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

destined henceforth to be a perpetual 
menace to them. A few months before 
the siege and deliverance of Vienna, Peter 
the Great had ascended the throne of 
Russia. When he came to manhood his 
first important act was to wrest from the 
Turks the port of Azov and obtain access 
to the waters of the Black Sea. Ever 
since then Russia, which under the iron 
hand of Peter assumed at least the out- 
ward semblance of a European state pro- 
vided with a modern governmental ma- 
chine and army and diplomatic service, 
has taken a foremost part in the affairs of 
the Near East. But she has not had the 
field to kvrself. She has from the first 
met not only foes but rivals, and her chief 
rival has been Austria. Little as they 
have liked it, Russia and Austria, in all 
their calculations and plans in regard to 
Turkey and later to the Christian states 
of the Balkans, have had to take each 
other into account for the last two hun- 
dred years. Their ambitions and inter- 



RUSSIA AND TURKEY 60 

ests have continually come into conflict, 
and the two powers have been often 
enough on the verge of war with one an- 
other. It is, in truth, a remarkable fact, 
that, critical as the situation has been be- 
tween them, jealous as they have shown 
themselves of one another, they have 
never actually come to blows until the 
world conflict of 1914.* 

The almost permanent hostility be- 
tween Russia and Turkey, who are at war 
with one another for the tenth time, has 
been based on causes historical, religious, 
social, and economic. The Turk has been 
the successor of the Tartars, the former 
masters of the Russians, who even at the 
time of Peter the Great as Turkish vas- 
sals held the whole territory north of the 
Black Sea. The Turk has been the infi- 
del, the Asiatic, under whose tyranny 
millions of Christians, the Orthodox 
brethren of the Russians and many of 

*The nominal hostilities between them on two occasions 
during the Napoleonic period can hardly be termed war. 



70 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

them fellow Slavs, have groaned and suf- 
fered for centuries. The Russians on 
their part have regarded their country as 
the successor and avenger of the Byzan- 
tine empire, destined to erect the cross 
once more on the cathedral of St. Sophia, 
and to liberate Greek Orthodox Christen- 
dom, and especially the oppressed Balkan 
Slavs, from Paynim rule. As the popula- 
tion of Russia has increased, it has ex- 
panded southward into the prairie lands, 
richer and more fertile than the northern 
forests, but it has only been able to make 
its way by driving back the Tartar and 
the Turk. Even yet it has not reached 
open water. In order to gain access to 
western Europe, the great and growing 
maritime commerce of the regions north 
and east of the Black Sea must pass 
through channels still in foreign hands. 
Russia has grown to greatness largely at 
the expense of the Turks, and it seems 
impossible that she should have perma- 
nently good relations with them as long 



RUSSIA AND TURKEY 71 

as the entrance to the Black Sea remains 
under their control. Again and again the 
Eastern Question has been the chief of 
her interests. She has often not known 
her own mind; she has made her fair 
share of costly blunders; but, in the main, 
her policy has been consistent, and has 
been dictated, though at times uncon- 
sciously, by natural laws as well as by the 
sympathies of her people. Only occasion- 
ally and for short intervals has she posed 
as the friend and defender of the Turk. 

The chief disadvantage with which 
Russia has had to contend has been the 
distances that her forces have had to 
traverse before they could arrive at the 
scene of action. They have had to oper- 
ate from remote bases and to overcome 
one line of defence after another. But 
these drawbacks have diminished as her 
frontiers and her settled territory have 
been pushed farther to the south and her 
means of communication have improved. 
On the other hand, the fact that her 



72 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

people have been of the same faith and 
of the same race as the majority of the 
Christians of European Turkey has given 
to her conflicts with the Ottoman empire 
a moral justification and a popular na- 
tional character of the utmost value. 
They have been crusades and wars of 
liberation. In recent years, as fanati- 
cism has declined, the religious sentiment 
has been replaced by an almost equally 
potent nationalistic one. The desire to 
aid brother Slavs rather than brother 
Orthodox has fired the Russian popular 
mind, but the effects have been much the 
same, and have strengthened, and, in- 
deed, more than once forced, the hand 
of the government of St. Petersburg. 

Conversely, Russia, as the one inde- 
pendent and mighty Orthodox power, 
was long looked upon by most of the 
Christian subjects of the Sultan as their 
protector and future liberator. Their 
hopes and their sympathies have turned 
naturally to her, not to Catholic Austria, 



THE CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS OF TURKEY 73 

the zealous daughter of the hated Roman 
church. Russia could count on these 
Christians for such assistance as they 
could give in furnishing her with informa- 
tion, aiding her agents, and smoothing the 
way for her armies. Even of late, when 
the religious motive has receded into the 
background, the Russians, though they 
have lost most of their hold on the Ru- 
manians and Greeks, have been in a much 
better position to win over the Monte- 
negrins, Serbians, and Bulgarians, their 
fellow Slavs, than have the Germans and 
Magyars of Austria-Hungary. It has 
also, for the same reasons, been easier for 
Russia than for Austria to stir up troubles 
in the dominions of the Sultan or to find 
causes for interfering in behalf of his op- 
pressed subjects. The role of defender 
of the oppressed has, indeed, never been 
a peculiarly Austrian one. 

The situation and policy of Austria 
have been widely different. Until 1870 
the government at Vienna was usually 



74 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

more concerned with the affairs of Ger- 
many and of Italy than with those of the 
Ottoman empire. It has been consistent 
in its determination that Russia should 
not be allowed to dispose of affairs in the 
East without consulting the interests of 
Austria, but it has more than once 
changed its mind as to whether those in- 
terests could better be served by protect- 
ing the Turks against Russian aggression 
or by a division of Turkish spoils. In the 
eighteenth century Austria usually leaned 
to the latter policy. Since then, for the 
last one hundred and twenty years, she 
has been for the most part the friend of 
the Ottoman empire, though not a senti- 
mental one, and quite ready to profit at 
its expense if that should seem the wisest 
course. She has had the strategical ad- 
vantage of being near to the scene of 
action and of occupying a position which 
threatened the exposed flank and long 
line of communication of the Russian 
armies when they had advanced far to 
the southward. 



THE CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS OF TURKEY 75 

With the early years of the nineteenth 
century a new element appears in the 
Eastern Question. The Christian subject 
nationalities, which for generations had 
submitted passively to Turkish rule, be- 
gan to reassert their rights to independent 
existence and to strive to cast off the 
yoke of the oppressor. With these move- 
ments the Russian people ardently sym- 
pathized from the first, and the govern- 
ment of St. Petersburg also supported 
them, though rather intermittently. Aus- 
tria, on the other hand, cared nothing 
for the wrongs or for the aspirations of 
Greeks and Serbs and Rumanians, whom 
she regarded as clients of Russia, nor did 
she wish to see them achieve indepen- 
dence at the expense of her former foe but 
now convenient neighbor, the Ottoman 
empire. She, therefore, bitterly opposed 
the intervention of the powers that led to 
the liberation of Greece. At the time of 
the Crimean war, she not only ordered the 
Russians out of the Rumanian principali- 
ties, but after it was certain they were 



76 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

defeated, practically joined the alliance 
against them which forced them to the 
Peace of Paris, and by a treaty with Eng- 
land and France guaranteed the integrity 
of the Ottoman empire. 

That empire, thus set up again by the 
powers, enjoyed a few years of progress 
and reform, but soon the process of de- 
composition set in more rapidly than 
ever. Corruption and misgovernment 
were everywhere rampant, and the money 
wrung from an overtaxed people was 
squandered in wanton fashion, until in 
1875 the national debt was scaled down 
by partial repudiation. Security of life 
and property, or justice before the courts, 
hardly existed for the Christian subjects 
of the Sultan. It is no wonder that they 
looked across the borders with envy to 
their more fortunate brethren in the little 
Balkan states which had succeeded in 
emancipating themselves, wholly or in 
part, from Turkish rule. It was also in 
the nature of things that they found sym- 



PAN SLAVISM 77 



pathy not only among their free Balkan 
kinsmen but also farther away, a sym- 
pathy heightened by a nationalistic move- 
ment that had been going on in the Rus- 
sian empire itself. 

The intense consciousness of national- 
ity which has been so potent a factor in 
the history of the world since about the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century, even if 
at bottom much the same everywhere, has 
taken on many shapes in different coun- 
tries. In Russia one of its manifestations 
has been a keen new interest in the fate 
of the other Slav peoples and a desire for 
union with them. As a purely senti- 
mental idea, based on real or fancied 
community of race, language, and cul- 
ture, but without political objects, this 
movement has been called Slavophilism. 
Akin to this, but going a step further, and 
with the avowed aim of bringing the 
various Slav peoples into some sort of 
common political system, has been the 
better known movement termed Pan- 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



slavism. Not unnaturally this last doc- 
trine was regarded by foreign countries 
with Slavic subjects as a menace to their 
integrity, especially as it found partisans 
among all the Slav peoples. In 1867 their 
ideals were set forth with much fervor in 
a Panslavic Congress held in Moscow. 
Panslavism had by this time obtained no 
small hold on Russian public opinion, 
and could count its orators and its poets 
and its many local societies whose object 
was not only to preach the cause but to 
give assistance to brother Slavs suffering 
under foreign oppression. 

The imperial government at first looked 
on the movement with little favor. Ever 
since the days of Peter the Great the 
Russian court and administration had 
cared more for being regarded as full- 
fledged exponents of general European 
civilization than they had for any pecu- 
liar virtues of the Slavic race. It was 
difficult, too, to harmonize Panslavic 
ideals with the severity which had been 



PANSLA VISM AND THE BALKAN PENINSULA 79 

meted out to the Poles since the insurrec- 
tion of 1863. Nevertheless, the Panslav- 
ists had their friends at court and in the 
official world of St. Petersburg, and were 
supported by a widespread national feel- 
ing. 

The Balkan Peninsula presented an 
obvious field for the activity of those 
zealous for the cause of Slavic welfare. 
Serbia and Montenegro had, indeed, won 
their liberties, but there were still several 
million Slavs groaning under the evils of 
Turkish misrule. It is no wonder that 
they found ardent sympathy in Russia, 
and that Panslavist organizations there 
not only sent them money for schools and 
for many other needs, but also encouraged 
their hopes of independence and aided 
them to plot and prepare for it. The au- 
thorities in St. Petersburg seem to have 
kept aloof from these activities, though 
they must have had some cognizance of 
them; but the able and not too scru- 
pulous ambassador in Constantinople, 



80 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Count Ignatiev, an ardent Panslavist, 
gave ground for English and Austrian 
accusations that the Russian embassy 
was a centre of conspiracy against the 
integrity of the Ottoman empire. In 
spite of this, Ignatiev had more influence 
with the Sultan than had any of his col- 
leagues. 

The special object of Russian interest 
was the Bulgarians. They had reawak- 
ened to national consciousness later than 
had the Greeks and the Serbs, but now 
they were awake. Since the middle of 
the century there had been an active Bul- 
garian movement, not outwardly dis- 
loyal, yet, in the nature of things, con- 
cealing under its efforts for education and 
progress hopes for political emancipation. 
It had already achieved one notable suc- 
cess in 1870, when, thanks in part to Rus- 
sian influence, the Sultan had been per- 
suaded to consent to the establishment of 
a Bulgarian ecclesiastical exarchate, in- 
dependent of the Greek patriarch of Con- 



BULGARIA, BOSNIA, AND HERZEGOVINA 81 

stantinople. The action of Russia on 
this occasion showed that times had 
changed, that the Greeks were no longer 
her favorites as in the days of Catherine 
II, but that in her sentiments toward the 
Christian populations of the East the 
nationalistic impulse had now taken the 
place of the old religious one. 

Bad as conditions were in Bulgaria, 
they were still worse in the territories of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here the un- 
fortunate Christian peasantry had to suf- 
fer not only from the usual exactions of 
the Turkish official and tax-gatherer, but 
also from the oppression of the upper 
classes, a landowning aristocracy who, 
though of Serbian origin, were Moham- 
medan in faith, and treated their serfs 
with brutal harshness. The mountain- 
ous nature of the region, which made in- 
surrection easy and its repression difficult, 
the patent weakness of the Turkish gov- 
erriment, and the spectacle of the success 
of their brethren in Serbia in achieving in- 



&2 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

dependence contributed to make a rising 
of the hard-pressed Christians in Bosnia 
and Herzegovina an event that might 
occur at any time. 

But here the interests of Austria would 
at once be vitally affected. Already, in 
the wars of the eighteenth century, Aus- 
trian armies had entered these regions. 
Since 1815 Bosnia and Herzegovina had 
been surrounded on three sides by Aus- 
tro-Hungarian territory, and they formed 
the obvious hinterland for the maritime 
province of Dalmatia, which without 
them had unsatisfactory connection with 
the rest of the empire. The possibility of 
their acquisition must have been often in 
the minds of the statesmen in Vienna, 
especially since the loss of Venice had 
weakened the position of Austria in the 
Adriatic and given her a dangerous rival 
there in the new kingdom of Italy. The 
military authorities frankly advocated the 
annexation of the territory at the earliest 
favorable opportunity, and there is reason 



INSURRECTION IN HERZEGOVINA AND BOSNIA 83 

for thinking that the emperor himself was 
anxious to obtain compensation in this 
way for the loss of Lombardy and Vene- 
tia, and not to go down to history as one 
of the few Hapsburgs under whose rule 
the dominions of the house had grown 
smaller, not larger. In 1875 he paid a 
visit to Dalmatia with an ostentation and 
in a manner that seemed to show interest 
in the land beyond the borders of the 
province. 

When, therefore, in the course of that 
autumn news began to reach Europe of 
an insurrection in Herzegovina which soon 
spread to Bosnia, and which the Turks 
appeared unable to suppress, there was 
little to surprise but much to alarm those 
who cared for the preservation of Eun> 
pean peace. However cordial the inter- 
course might be between Austria and 
Russia, however specific the political 
agreements, however friendly the sover- 
eigns, experience had shown again and 
again that the raising of the Eastern 



84 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Question was fraught with danger to good 
relations between the two empires. Twice 
before in the nineteenth century it had 
brought them into sharp opposition to 
one another, and now at St. Petersburg 
and at Vienna every one knew that the 
League of the Three Emperors was too 
feeble a bond to maintain Austro-Rus- 
sian harmony if there should be a serious 
clash of interests. 

At first there was little difficulty in 
maintaining the concert of the powers. 
All of them were sincerely anxious that 
the conflagration that had broken out in 
the Balkans should not spread farther. 
The nearest available consular officers 
were sent to hunt out the insurgents and 
persuade them to lay down their arms 
and trust to the promises of the Sultan. 
This they refused to do; they had lost 
faith in such promises. As there was no 
doubt that their grievances were real, 
and as the sins of the Turkish administra- 
tion were notorious, the three imperial 



THE ANDRlSSY NOTE 85 

governments entered into communication 
with one another and agreed upon a note 
which took its name from Count An- 
drassy, and which demanded from the 
Porte, besides an armistice, a series of 
reforms, including the equality of Chris- 
tians and Mohammedans, the abolition of 
the farming of taxes, an improvement of 
agrarian conditions, and the appointment 
of a mixed Christian and Mohammedan 
commission to look after the carrying out 
of these measures. England and France 
adhered to this note, and on January 31, 
1876, it was presented in Constantinople, 
where after some parley it was accepted 
in principle by the Turks. But the in- 
surgents were not satisfied. They made 
counter-propositions, demanding not only 
greater concessions but guarantees; that 
is to say, that the powers should see to it 
that the Turkish promises were carried 
out. The Turks in their turn promptly 
refused, and fierce desultory fighting con- 
tinued, while thousands of refugees fled 



86 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

into Dalmatia and Montenegro and agi- 
tation increased among all the Balkan 
Slavs. Aroused by this state of affairs, 
the three imperial governments deter- 
mined to make another effort. It was 
agreed that their foreign ministers should 
meet in Berlin and come to a further de- 
cision on Eastern affairs. This time 
Prince Gorchakov took the lead. He was 
emphatic in his disbelief in Turkish prom- 
ises and favored some vigorous step, but 
met with unwillingness on the part of 
Andrassy. A new note, however, was 
drawn up, known as the Berlin Memo- 
randum. The suggestions of the An- 
drassy note were reiterated, and it was 
declared that the carrying out of the 
necessary reforms must be under the 
safeguard of an international commis- 
sion. Finally, in case the Turks should 
remain obstinate, there was a distinct 
hint at coercion. 

Up to this point there had been at least 
apparent agreement among the great 



THE BERLIN MEMORANDUM 87 

powers. But the League of the Three 
Emperors had made a mistake In assum- 
ing that all the other European states 
would accede without discussion to what- 
ever decisions were submitted to them. 
France and Italy might not be in a posi- 
tion to follow an independent course, but 
Great Britain had just then as its prime 
minister a man who held lofty ideas about 
his country and had definite views as to 
the course he meant to pursue. 

Benjamin Disraeli, soon to be made 
Earl of Beaconsfield, may be termed the 
first of modern English Imperialists. To 
him the British empire was no mere ab- 
straction; it was a great world power with 
interests everywhere and a right to be 
consulted and listened to everywhere. 
This right he meant to assert. The coro- 
nation in 1876 of Queen Victoria as em- 
press of India was not the bit of empty 
theatrical display it appeared to many. 
It was an assertion of the imperial posi- 
tion of the sovereign of Great Britain, 



88 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

and as such a declaration of policy. Dis- 
raeli hardly entertained many illusions 
about the Turks; but the Orient had long 
appealed to his imagination, and he be- 
lieved that England could and should 
play a great part there. He had already 
achieved one brilliant diplomatic success. 
By his sudden secret purchase of the Khe- 
dive's shares in the Suez Canal he had 
strengthened the position of Britain in 
the East at the expense of France, who 
saw her control of the great waterway, 
built by a Frenchman with French money, 
slipping away from her, yet could only 
look on with impotent chagrin. Toward 
Prince Bismarck he seems to have felt at 
this time a certain personal dislike, and, 
it may be, jealousy, but the real foe, in 
his eyes, the power that he ever watched 
and distrusted, was Russia. His feelings 
in this respect may, as has often been 
asserted, have been influenced by his 
Jewish origin, but they were in accor- 
dance with English traditions of the pre- 



GREAT BRITAIN DISSENTS 89 

vious twenty years, and they were natural 
in the breast of a statesman who had 
visions of a splendid future for his own 
country. At this very time the violently 
anti-Russian ambassador of Britain at 
Constantinople was sending home alarm- 
ing reports of Muscovite intrigue. 

When the League of the Three Emper- 
ors had agreed upon the Andrassy note, 
London had acceded, though without en- 
thusiasm. Now when there came a sec- 
ond document on Eastern affairs, con- 
cocted without the participation of Great 
Britain, and merely submitted by tele- 
gram with a request for a prompt adhe- 
sion, British dignity and the spirit that 
guided British policy asserted themselves. 
The reply sent was not prompt, and when 
it did come it was a flat refusal. "Her 
Majesty's government appreciate the ad- 
vantage of concerted action by the pow- 
ers in all that relates to the questions 
arising out of the insurrection, but they 
cannot consent to join in proposals which 



oo THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

they do not conscientiously believe likely 
to effect the pacification which all the 
powers desire to see attained." * 

This put an end to the unanimity of 
the powers, and also to any impression 
that the Memorandum might make on 
the Turks, who now felt that they had, 
as in 1854, friends on whom they could 
rely for support, even without following 
their advice. Meanwhile the situation in 
the East had become grave, for the ex- 
citement among the Christians of the 
Ottoman empire had stimulated counter- 
excitement among the Mohammedans. 
On May 6, 1876, a mob in Salonica mur- 
dered the French and German consuls 
there. On May 29 the stupid and profli- 
gate Sultan Abdul-Aziz was overthrown 
by a revolution. Six days later he was 
assassinated or committed suicide. He 
was succeeded by his brother, Murad V, 
who after a few months was deposed in 
his turn on account of insanity and re- 

* Parliamentary Papers, 1876, kxxiv, Turkey, no. 3, p. 171. 



SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO DECLARE WAR 91 

placed by Abdul-Hamid II, then a very 
young man. In May there were risings 
in Bulgaria, and in time rumors from 
there reached Europe of sporadic insur- 
rections followed by fierce repression. 
On July 1 and 2 Serbia and Montenegro, 
carried away by their sympathies for 
their insurgent kinsmen in Bosnia and 
Herzegovina and by the hope of adding 
these territories to their own, declared 
war on Turkey. 

As was inevitable, the news of what was 
happening in the Balkans at once affected 
Russia. The nation espoused with en- 
thusiasm the cause of the brother Slavs. 
Gifts of all kinds, and volunteers, includ- 
ing army officers, came pouring into Ser- 
bia. Public opinion began to clamor for 
war, or at least intervention, and the 
government itself could not, if it would, 
remain indifferent to the pressure that 
was being put on it. 

It was not, indeed, to be expected that 
Alexander II and his ministers could sit 



92 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

with folded hands as mere spectators of 
whatever events might occur in the Bal- 
kan Peninsula. Sooner or later they must 
take some decisive action. Every Rus- 
sian tradition in the Eastern Question 
made this imperative. But besides the 
probable hostility of England, they had, 
as so often before, to reckon with the 
attitude of Austria, especially since the 
immediate cause of the crisis had been 
the troubles in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
the part of the Balkan Peninsula in which 
she was most interested. It was well 
known at St. Petersburg that Austria, 
having abandoned the hope of playing a 
role in German and Italian affairs, was 
now looking more toward the iEgean, and 
was not inclined to remain a merely pas- 
sive spectator. Also, it was at least sus- 
pected that she could rely on the good 
will and perhaps the actual support of 
Germany. As early as 1867, the Austrian 
minister at St. Petersburg had suggested 
that if Russia were to regain Bessarabia, 



RUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 93 

Austria ought to have Bosnia and Herze- 
govina. Gorchakov had combated the 
idea, but not very strenuously.* We do 
not know whether it was considered again 
at Berlin in 1872. In the conversations 
that took place there, Gorchakov and 
Andrassy agreed not to meddle in the in- 
ternal affairs of the Ottoman empire, but 
not to aid it in suppressing insurrections 
in its dominions, even if appealed to. 
The first stipulation might be regarded as 
a concession on the part of Russia, the 
second on that of Austria, so long the 
supporter of the status quo. In the fol- 
lowing year, when Alexander II visited 
Francis Joseph in Vienna, the question of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina seems to have 
been taken up again and an understand- 
ing was reached but not put down in writ- 
ing. A treaty of alliance, however, of a 
general nature was concluded at the pal- 



* Count Friedrich Revertera. The incident is narrated by 
him in an article in the Deutsche Revue for May, 1904 
(pp. 139-H0). 



94 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

ace of Schonbrunn and signed by both 
sovereigns, who pledged themselves to full 
confidence in one another and to common 
action for the maintenance of European 
peace.* The time had now come when 
it was urgent to pass from these vague 
generalities to something more definite, 



* Revertera declares that there was a signed agreement that 
in case of a Russian-Turkish war Austria was to remain neu- 
tral, and in case of a Russian victory was to obtain Bosnia 
and Herzegovina. Russia was to have a free hand in settling 
the affairs of the other Balkan territories, but must not retain 
possession of Constantinople and must notify Austria in ad- 
vance of the terms of peace. This statement cannot be recon- 
ciled with the account given by Wertheimer (iii, 89), who had 
consulted the copy of the compact in Andrassy's own hand- 
writing. Revertera declares that he got his information from 
one of the Russian diplomats present at the discussion; but, 
writing about the event many years afterward, he may well 
have confused previous discussions and oral agreements with 
what was actually put into written form. According to Wert- 
heimer (ii, 118), quoting from the unpublished correspon- 
dence of the German ambassador, Prince Reuss, when An- 
drassy visited St. Petersburg in 1874, Gorchakov declared to 
him emphatically that an Austrian occupation of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina would mean a casus belli. On the other hand, 
the promptitude with which the understanding was reached 
at Reichstadt would suggest that the terms had been discussed 
earlier. It is curious that neither Goriainov nor Wertheimer 
nor any other writer, so far as I know, has alluded to Re- 
vertera's article. 



REICESTADT 95 



especially as divergencies of policy were 
beginning to manifest themselves. 

It was under these circumstances that 
the emperors of Russia and Austria, ac- 
companied by their foreign ministers, once 
more met, on July 8, 1876, at the Bohe- 
mian castle of Reichstadt. The inter- 
view lasted but a few hours and the scant 
accounts of it that have been published 
contain several discrepancies. Still, the 
main outlines of what was stipulated are 
clear. No official document was signed, 
but an understanding was reached and 
noted down, though some of its details 
may not have been put in writing or 
even formally expressed. Two hypoth- 
eses were discussed: the victory of the 
Turks and the victory of the Serbians and 
Montenegrins. In the first event, Russia 
and Austria were to preserve the two little 
Christian states from suffering permanent 
loss. This looked simple, but the second 
contingency — and it seems to have been 
regarded as the more probable of the two 



96 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

— was much harder to provide for. A 
defeat of the Turks might well mean the 
end of the Ottoman empire in Europe. 
In that case, what should be the policy of 
Russia and Austria ? 

The arrangement on this subject con- 
cluded at Reichstadt showed astonishing 
moderation or disinterestedness or weak- 
ness — call it which we will — on the part 
of Russia. It provided for a number of 
slight additions of territory to Monte- 
negro, Serbia, and Greece, and also for an 
independent Bulgaria and Albania (Con- 
stantinople was to be a free city), but 
there was to be no large Balkan Slav 
state, whether Serbian or Bulgarian, that 
could be either a dangerous satellite of 
Russia or a real obstacle to Austrian prog- 
ress farther to the southward at some 
future date. Austria was to have imme- 
diate possession of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina. All that Russia stipulated for 
herself was the fragment of Bessarabia 
that had been taken away from her at 



REICHSTADT 97 



the Peace of Paris in 1856,* and this, 
though it gave her a foothold on the lower 
Danube, was a matter of pride rather than 
of real importance, and, secondly (but 
perhaps not in writing), a rectification of 
her frontier in Asia, a matter in which 
Austria felt no interest. No wonder that 
Emperor Francis Joseph and Count An- 
drassy are said to have left Reichstadt 
well satisfied. f 

Events in the Balkans now ran their 
course, but not in the way that had been 
expected. The Ottoman state which had 
shown itself incompetent to put down 
the insurrection in Bosnia suddenly ral- 
lied in the face of new perils. The feeble 
risings in Bulgaria had been quenched in 
the blood of some twelve thousand of the 
inhabitants, men, women, and children. 
It is true that the Montenegrins held 
their own, but the Serbians, whose terri- 



* But not the islands of the delta, which she had held from 
1812 to 1856. 
f A. Fournier, Wie wir zu Bosnian kamen, p. 23. 



98 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

tory was soon invaded, were defeated in 
one encounter after another, in spite of 
the streams of Russian volunteers that 
came to their aid. On August 29, Prince 
Milan appealed to the powers for media- 
tion. At the news of these disasters the 
excitement in Russia increased, and the 
clamor for armed intervention in behalf 
of the Balkan Slavs became ever louder. 
The government could not but take heed 
of this, and, while refusing to allow itself 
to be hurried into precipitate action, it 
urged the calling of a general European 
conference, and even suggested to Eng- 
land that she take the initiative. 

The game of political and diplomatic 
intrigue was at this moment particularly 
intricate. The League of the Three Em- 
perors still existed, and the relations be- 
tween the members were in theory close 
and cordial, but not one of the partners 
had complete trust in the others. Cir- 
cumstances beyond their control seemed 
to be pushing them toward an estrange- 



THE GAME OF INTRIGUE 99 

ment, if not worse. Bismarck, Gorcha- 
kov, and Andrassy were all diplomats of 
more than ordinary skill, and each was 
now trying to feel his way with the others. 
Bismarck, the ablest of the three, was 
also in much the strongest position, for, 
besides representing the most powerful 
empire, he had the fewest difficulties at 
home to contend with, and he had no 
immediate ambitions to serve or vital 
interests at stake. 

In August General Manteuffel was 
sent witrTa letter from Emperor William 
assuring the Tsar of his undiminished 
friendship and of his readiness to sup- 
port him.* Manteuffel also seems, fol- 
lowing in the steps of the Radowitz mis- 
sion of the previous year, to have sug- 
gested a new treaty of alliance between 
Germany and Russia, presumably on the 
same sort of terms, namely, freedom of ac- 
tion against France in return for support 

*The language was perhaps stronger than Bismarck ap- 
proved. 



ioo THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

in the Eastern Question. Again Emperor 
Alexander refused to entertain the sug- 
gestion. Instead he asked that Ger- 
many should keep Austria in check. 
Matters were not going well between St. 
Petersburg and Vienna. Owing to the 
Ottoman victories the Reichstadt agree- 
ment soon ceased to fit the situation. 
Austria no longer showed any zeal for the 
betterment of the Turk; she at first re- 
fused the conference of the powers when 
suggested by England; and though she 
later consented to it, she made it clear 
that she would not consent to the political 
autonomy of Bosnia, or to its annexation 
to Serbia. Such an attitude could not 
but provoke irritation. 

It happened that Alexander II was at 
that time at Livadia in the Crimea, as 
were a number of the chief Russian gen- 
erals, who were naturally occupied with 
the political situation and with plans for 
a possible campaign in the near future. 
Suddenly General von Werder, the Ger- 



BISMARCK'S REPLY 



man military representative specially at- 
tached to the Tsar, was asked to inquire 
by telegraph whether Germany would 
remain neutral in case of war between 
Russia and Austria. The question was 
most unwelcome to Bismarck, who tried 
to evade a direct reply; but when it 
was repeated with urgency, he at last 
answered that Germany could indeed put 
up with it that her friends should win 
or lose battles against each other, "but 
not that one of the two should be so 
severely wounded and injured that her 
position as an independent great power 
taking its place in the councils of Europe 
would be endangered. "* This was plain 
enough. As no one in Russia had any 
fear that she might need German support 
to maintain her position as an independ- 
ent great power against Austria, the real 
meaning of Bismarck's reply was that 
Russia, despite the fact that she had been 

*See Bismarck's account of the matter. Gedanken und 
Erinnerungen, ii, p. 214. 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



prepared to fight Austria if necessary in 
behalf of Germany six years earlier, now 
could not count on German neutrality in 
a Russo- Austrian war. A couple of weeks 
later Bismarck once more sounded Gor- 
chakov as to whether, in return for the 
assistance of Germany in the East, Rus- 
sia would guarantee to her the possession 
of Alsace-Lorraine. Again the proposal 
was declined.* 

Baffled in its hope of obtaining a prom- 
ise of German neutrality in case of a 
breach with Austria, the government of 
the Tsar, which was being reluctantly 
driven toward a Turkish war by popular 
feeling at home, turned again to its pro- 
fessed ally and friend in Vienna. Al- 
ready, before von Werder had left Liva- 
dia, and before Bismarck's reply had been 
received, a special envoy had been sent 
to Emperor Francis Joseph bearing a let- 
ter from the Tsar, in which Alexander pro- 
posed that in order to put pressure on the 

* Wertheimer, iii, p. 249. 



RUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 103 

Turks the Austrians should occupy Bos- 
nia and Herzegovina, the Russians Bul- 
garia, and that an allied fleet should be 
sent to the Dardanelles. 

In Vienna these overtures met with a 
cool reception. Neither Count Andrassy 
nor his master had the slightest desire to 
go to war with Turkey. Partnership with 
Russia was looked at askance by many 
elements in the Dual Empire, and par- 
ticularly by the Hungarians, who* had 
Turkish sympathies and who had not 
forgotten that their revolution in 1849 
had been put down by Russian armies. 
Even the idea of annexing Bosnia and 
Herzegovina was none too popular, ex- 
cept in military circles. The Germans 
and the Hungarians, the dominant na- 
tionalities in the two parliaments, feared 
the results of so large an addition to the 
Slav elements in the population. An- 
drassy, therefore, found himself in a deli- 
cate situation. He does not appear to 
have been eager for the annexation, and 



104 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

he was anxious, if it should come, to have 
it come peacefully, but he was deter- 
mined not to let the territory go to any 
other power or to permit any new obsta- 
cles to be placed in the path if annexation 
should prove to be desirable. Accord- 
ingly, Emperor Francis Joseph, while re- 
serving the rights and interests of Aus- 
tria whatever might be the outcome of 
the existing situation, refused to take any 
joint steps with Russia toward actual 
coercion of the Turks. A fresh inter- 
change of imperial letters produced no 
further agreement. In other words, Aus- 
tria, though admitting that conditions 
in the Balkan Peninsula were intolerable, 
was none the less determined to leave the 
risk and burden of intervention to her 
ally, and yet to take her full pound of 
flesh. Who could feel sure that even the 
friendly neutrality which was all that she 
offered was to be relied upon, and that 
when once the armies of her ally had 
made their way well to the southward, 



THE BULGARIAN ATROCITIES 105 

and she could threaten their long ex- 
posed line of communications from her 
dominant position on their flank, she 
would not come forward with new de- 
mands ? 

Meanwhile, in England the reports of 
the Bulgarian atrocities, elaborated in a 
famous pamphlet by Mr. Gladstone, had 
excited such public indignation as to 
dampen for a time the pro-Turkish zeal 
of Lord Beaconsfield's administration. In 
Russia the war party was temporarily 
mollified by an ultimatum on October 31, 
summoning the Porte to grant within 
forty-eight hours a two months' armistice 
to Serbia. Even before receiving it the 
Turks, yielding to English advice and still 
more to the necessities of the situation, 
had decided to make the concession. 
None the less, Russia was steadily pre- 
paring for war, and on November 2 the 
Tsar, in an audience given to Lord Loftus, 
the British ambassador, while earnestly 
disclaiming all desire of territorial ag- 



106 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

grandizement and especially of the ac- 
quisition of Constantinople, declared: 
"He wished to maintain the European 
concert, but if Europe remained passive, 
he would be obliged to act alone."* On 
the following day he sent a third personal 
letter to Emperor Francis Joseph, and 
fresh instructions to his own ambassador 
at Vienna to negotiate for the friendly 
neutrality of Austria even though she 
had refused her cooperation. 

But now Lord Beaconsfield sounded a 
blast. At a Guildhall banquet on No- 
vember 9 he proclaimed that "though 
the policy of England is peace, there is no 
country so well prepared for war as our 
own," and he continued in a strain which 
was generally interpreted as a menace to 
Russia. Next day the Tsar replied f in 
an address to the nobility at Moscow, in 
which he declared that in spite of herself 

* Parliamentary Papers, 1877, xc, p. 576. 
f It is not certain whether he had already received news of 
the Guildhall speech. 



PROPOSAL FOR A CONFERENCE 107 

Russia might have to draw the sword; 
and on the morrow he emphasized his re- 
marks by an order for the mobilization 
of six army corps. 

The English government, however, had 
already issued an invitation to the powers 
for a conference at Constantinople.* The 
programme was based on the recognition 
of the integrity of the Ottoman empire 
and a disclaimer of all individual advan- 
tages on the part of the powers, but the 
object of the meeting was the elaboration 
of a satisfactory plan of reform and au- 
tonomy for the Balkan Christians. Lord 
Derby suggested peace and the status quo 
for Serbia and Montenegro, autonomy 
for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and guar- 
antees for an improved administration of 
Bulgaria. Russia was in sympathy with 
these proposals. Austria was not; but 
as she could not make public the real 
grounds for her objections to the auton- 

* We may attribute this to the foreign secretary, Lord 
Derby, rather than to the premier. 



108 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

omy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she ob- 
tained a definition that it was local ad- 
ministrative reform, not political auton- 
omy, that was meant ; and she instructed 
her representatives to observe a passive 
attitude. 

The official opening of the conference at 
Constantinople was preceded by prelimi- 
nary sessions from which the Turks were 
excluded: a proceeding naturally offensive 
to them, but necessary, as they could not 
well be permitted to take part in the dis- 
cussion of what terms were to be imposed 
upon them. For once English and Rus- 
sian diplomacy were in harmony. Lord 
Salisbury, the chief British representative, 
displayed a zeal for reform that was in 
rather surprising contrast to the recent at- 
titude of the government he represented. 
He and Count Ignatiev worked hand in 
hand, with the result that the powers 
agreed upon a series of demands that 
were to be presented to the Turks. Mere 
promises of amelioration could no longer 



THE CONSTANTINOPLE CONFERENCE 109 

be accepted. Europe knew by this time 
that "the whole history of the Ottoman 
empire, since it was admitted into the 
European concert under the engagements 
of the Treaty of Paris, has proved that 
the Porte is unable to guarantee the exe- 
cution of reforms in the provinces by 
Turkish officials, who accept them with 
reluctance, and neglect them with im- 
punity." * The powers now insisted not 
only on local autonomy and improvement 
of administration, but also on the appoint- 
ment of a foreign supervising commission 
to see that their decrees were carried out. 
These unpalatable demands were pre- 
sented to the Turks at the first 'full' 
meeting of the conference (December 23). 
But proceedings were soon interrupted by 
the sound of the booming of cannon. 
Whereupon Safet Pasha, Turkish foreign 
minister, informed his astonished hearers 
that they were listening to a salute fired 

* Instructions of Lord Derby to Lord Salisbury, Parlia- 
mentary Papers, 1877, xci, Turkey, no, 2, p. 7. 



no THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

in honor of the constitution which His 
Majesty, the Sultan, had just conferred 
upon the peoples under his rule. It was, 
indeed, deserving of a salute, for it was all 
that it should be, modern and democratic, 
granting not only representative govern- 
ment but full and equal rights to every 
race and creed in the transformed Otto- 
man state. Compared with what it be- 
stowed, the reforms insisted upon by the 
powers looked insignificant enough; but 
as its blessings were for all, it made no 
mention of special autonomies, and, of 
course, foreign control was inconceivable. 
The only immediate effect of this the- 
atrical stroke was to irritate the members 
of the conference, who regarded the whole 
thing as a farce and continued to press 
their demands. On January 13, 1877, 
they presented them, with some modifi- 
cations, as an ultimatum. But the Turks 
stuck to their ground, refusing to tolerate 
foreign interference and claiming that the 
Sultan had of his own free will conferred 



AMBASSADORS LEAVE CONSTANTINOPLE in 

on his subjects, Christian as well as Mo- 
hammedan, far more than the powers had 
asked for. Even the solemn departure of 
all the ambassadors from Constantinople 
failed to affect their attitude of flat de- 
fiance. The Turks did not believe that 
Europe could or would do anything. 

In this belief they were right as re- 
garded Europe as a whole, but one power 
had gone too far to retreat. Genuine as 
was his reluctance at being drawn into 
war, Alexander II felt that his dignity 
and that of his country made it impossi- 
ble for him to submit tamely to further 
rebuffs. He would have liked to act as 
the mandatory of Europe, but though the 
other powers had joined in diplomatic 
notes and had even withdrawn their rep- 
resentatives from Constantinople, they 
would go no further. Russia had to act 
alone, at her own risk and peril; and, 
above all, before launching herself upon 
the enterprise, she must take into ac- 
count the attitude of Austria. 



112 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

And that attitude by this time was 
clear enough. The government at Vi- 
enna not only was determined to take no 
action itself, but also had no intention of 
granting a free hand to its ally. Its posi- 
tion was a disagreeably strong one. The 
geographical situation of Austria on the 
flank of the Russian armies made it un- 
safe for them to venture into the Balkan 
Peninsula unless assured of her neutrality, 
and if the Tsar in his anger should turn 
them first against her, not only wotna she 
have the probable help of England, but 
she could at the last resort count on the 
protection of Germany. It was all very 
well for Bismarck to declare, as he did in 
his celebrated speech to the Reichstag of 
December 5, 1876, that for Germany the 
whole Eastern Question was not worth 
the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. 
He might proclaim her equal friendship 
for both her allies and her desire to main- 
tain good relations between them. None 
the less, he had made his choice and let it 



THE RUSSO-AUSTRIAN AGREEMENT 113 

be understood that in case of a conflict, if 
the integrity of Austria were threatened, 
Germany would take up arms in her be- 
half.* It is true this did not prevent him 
from continually repeating in public, and 
still more in his interviews with the Rus- 
sian ambassador, the assurances of his 
warm friendship for Russia and his desire 
to serve her. He also, in these inter- 
views, gave his advice in favor of a war 
with Turkey.| 

The result of all this was that after 
some negotiation two Russo-Austrian 
agreements were concluded. The first, 
which was signed at Vienna on January 
15, 1877, provided that, in case of war, 
Austria would observe an attitude of 
friendly neutrality and would give diplo- 
matic support; but it was stipulated that 
though Serbia and Montenegro might ren- 
der military aid, their territories must not 

* He expressed himself definitely in this sense at a parlia- 
mentary dinner (December 1), and in accordance with his 
wishes, his words were widely quoted in the newspapers. 

t Tatishchev, Alexander II (in Russian), ii, pp. 349-354. 



ii4 TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

be used by Russian troops as a base of 
operations. This meant, to use a term 
not then invented, that they were not to 
be regarded as in the Russian 'sphere of 
influence.' In a second agreement, not 
signed till three months later, but re- 
garded as an integral part of the first and 
antedated accordingly, it was stipulated, 
as at Reichstadt, that in case of a dis- 
memberment of the Ottoman empire, Ser- 
bia and Montenegro were, indeed, to ob- 
tain some enlargement, but that Austria 
should have Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
while Russia was to get back the part of 
Bessarabia she had been forced to cede 
in 1856.* 

Once more Count Andrassy and his 
master had cause to feel satisfied and 
doubtless did so, even though Emperor 
Francis Joseph in a telegram to the Tsar 

* Russia was also to have Batum and the adjacent terri- 
tory, but by Gorchakov's express wish this was not men- 
tioned in the compact, which had to do with the European 
and not the Asiatic territories of the Porte. Wertheimer, ii, 
P- 393- 



LAST EFFORTS TO AVERT WAR 115 

expressed the fervent hope that these 
agreements might never have to be car- 
ried out and that their efforts to maintain 
peace might yet succeed. Alexander II, 
indeed, still hesitated.* The excited pub- 
lic urged him to action; but he and his 
ministers realized that Russia had not 
yet recovered from the wounds of the 
Crimean war. Her army was not thor- 
oughly reorganized, her finances were in 
bad condition, even the emancipation of 
the serfs and the other great reforms of 
the earlier years of his reign had been fol- 
lowed after the first enthusiasm by dis- 
appointment and discontent, and there 
were already dangerous symptoms of 
revolutionary agitation. All these facts 
made the position of Alexander II and 
his chancellor a difficult one. 

The Tsar accordingly made a last effort 
to bring about a peaceful solution. On 
March 31 a document was drawn up in 

* The beginning of the winter was the worst season for the 
opening of military operations. 



n6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

London embodying a final appeal to the 
Porte. The proposal for a foreign com- 
mission was dropped, and was replaced 
by a mere threat of further action in case 
the reforms demanded were not carried 
out. All the other powers adhered to 
this protocol, though without much en- 
thusiasm, perhaps even without the wish 
that it should succeed. The situation 
was further complicated by what the 
Turks regarded as an unfair demand for 
their demobilization before that of Rus- 
sia. At any rate, the Sultan, supported 
by the unanimous vote of the parliament 
he had summoned under the new consti- 
tution, had now determined to refuse all 
concessions. On April 10, 1877, the Porte 
answered the powers in a circular note in 
which it refused to tolerate any foreign 
interference in its internal affairs, and 
three days later it notified Montenegro 
that the existing armistice had come to 
an end. On April 24 Russia declared 
war. 



OUTBREAK OF THE RUSS0-TURK1SH WAR 117 

The position of Russia at the outbreak 
of hostilities was not particularly favor- 
able from either a political or a military 
standpoint. By considerable sacrifices 
she had secured for the time being the 
neutrality of Austria, but that neutrality 
was in no true sense friendly, and it was 
provisional, dependent on the highly un- 
certain course of events. From the Brit- 
ish came the word "that the decision of 
the Russian government is not one which 
can have their concurrence or approval,"* 
and Lord Derby gave formal warning 
against the inclusion of Egypt or the Suez 
Canal in the sphere of hostilities, or the 
occupation of Constantinople, or any 
change in the treaties of 1856. The atti- 
tude of Germany was one of ostentatious 
disinterestedness, that is to say, lack of 
interest. France and Italy did not need 
to be taken into serious consideration. 

On paper, at least, the army Russia 
could put into the field was much larger 

* Parliamentary Papers, 1877, xci, Turkey, no. 18, p. 4. 



n8 TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

than that of her adversary, and, thanks 
to the introduction of railways, it could 
be conveyed to the front with far greater 
ease than in any of her previous wars. 
That front, however, was a contracted 
one, owing to the agreement with Austria 
which precluded the use of Serbian terri- 
tory for military purposes. Russia, too, 
had not since regaining her liberty of ac- 
tion by the Treaty of London of 1871 had 
time to rebuild a Black Sea fleet capable 
of meeting the entire Turkish navy, which 
could be concentrated against it. She 
was, therefore, unable to bring troops and 
supplies by water or to hamper the Turks 
in this respect. The only way in which 
she could reach the European territory of 
her foe was through a Turkish vassal 
state, the principality of Rumania. 

Rumania had to make up her mind as 
to what would be the wisest policy to 
pursue under the circumstances. Russia 
had repeatedly invaded the principality 
in former wars, and had even occupied 



RUMANIA u 9 



it for years at a time, and had now no 
thought of allowing her sole passageway 
to the Balkan Peninsula to be barred by 
any desire of Rumania for neutrality. At- 
tempts at resistance on her part would 
be hopeless, even with Turkish aid, and 
would bring her misfortune; mere pas- 
sive acquiescence offered only negative 
advantages; but actual collaboration with 
Russia promised the much desired boon 
of complete emancipation from Turkish 
sovereignty. She therefore decided to 
conclude a treaty providing for the free 
passage of Russian troops, and when the 
Turks resented this as an act of hostility 
and bombarded Rumanian forts across 
the Danube, she declared war on her 
own account. Difficulties about subordi- 
nation, however, as well as the Russian 
contempt for the untried Rumanian mili- 
tia, and disinclination to share with them 
the glory of the campaign, resulted in 
their not taking part at first in military 
operations. 



120 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

In the spring of 1877 the military repu- 
tation of the Turks did not stand high. 
For the last two hundred years they had 
been defeated by inferior numbers in al- 
most every important battle they had 
fought — not only by Europeans, but even, 
not long before, by the unwarlike Egyp- 
tians. The glories of their earlier tri- 
umphs had thus become much dimmed. 
It was known that they were brave and 
could defend fortifications obstinately, 
but their discipline was loose, their offi- 
cers were ill trained, and the progressive 
disorganization of the Ottoman empire in 
the last twenty years did not promise well 
for the efficiency of the troops. The Rus- 
sians accordingly were confident of rapid 
and easy success, and they made the mis- 
take of undertaking their campaigns in 
both Europe and Asia with insufficient 
forces. Such ventures have often been 
justified by the outcome and might well 
have been in this case, but when such 
risks are run a single check may lead to 
grave disaster. 



PLEVNA 



The campaign began brilliantly. With 
little difficulty the Russians succeeded in 
crossing the Danube, they rapidly over- 
ran much of northern Bulgaria, seized 
some of the Balkan passes, and made a 
daring raid beyond. But the Turks, who 
in history have more than once surprised 
the world both favorably and unfavor- 
ably, rallied in an unexpected manner. A 
small Russian force incautiously attacked 
a much larger Turkish one under Osman 
Pasha in an important strategic position 
at Plevna and was shattered. When 
more men had been hastily gathered 
and the onslaught was renewed ten days 
later, the result was a second and more 
serious defeat. For a time the situation 
was critical, as the Turks now took the 
offensive and the Russian armies were in 
danger of being thrown back shamefully 
across the Danube. In Asia, too, they 
presently met with a sharp check and had 
to retreat to within their own frontiers. 
In both fields weeks must elapse before 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



considerable reinforcements could be 
brought up. 

Under these circumstances the Rus- 
sians, putting their pride in their pockets, 
appealed to Rumania for aid. This was 
granted on terms highly honorable to the 
Rumanians, and, assisted by the lack of 
capacity shown by the Turkish generals, 
saved the situation. The Russian and 
Rumanian forces did, indeed, fail in a 
third assault on Plevna, one of the great 
battles of the nineteenth century; but 
they kept their ground, and on the arrival 
of fresh troops they turned the attack into 
a siege. The Turks held out through the 
autumn, till at last, on December 10, Os- 
man Pasha, after a fierce belated attempt to 
cut his way through, surrendered his army. 

After this events followed each other 
swiftly. The Russians, heedless of the 
rigors of a winter campaign in the moun- 
tains, gave their disorganized enemies no 
respite, and forced their way across the 
Balkans, routed the Turks in one en- 



RUSSIAN VICTORIES 123 

gagement after another, and pressed on 
toward Constantinople. The tide had 
also turned in Asia, where the Turks were 
defeated in battle and the fortress of 
Kars was taken by storm. Serbia now 
joined in the war, and Greece was stirring. 

European diplomacy, which had been 
waiting on the course of military events, 
now awoke to feverish activity. Austria 
and Great Britain, in particular, were 
resolved not to accept any solution dis- 
advantageous to their interests. They 
asserted that the status of the Eastern 
Question was part of the public law of 
Europe, as established by the Congress of 
Paris in 1856, supplemented by the con- 
ference in London in 1871, and that no 
changes could be made in it without the 
consent of all the signatories. They 
wished, indeed, to be consulted by Russia 
in advance, that is to say, to have a voice 
in the negotiations. 

As the foreign offices at Vienna and 
London held much the same views, they 



124 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

kept in close touch with one another. 
London would have liked to take common 
action, and proposed this as early as May 
20, 1877. Andrassy, however, suspected 
the British government of having in mind 
the exigencies of home politics and of de- 
siring his aid in order to obtain a diplo- 
matic and parliamentary triumph for its 
own selfish benefit.* He did not wish to 
alienate too completely the Slavs in the 
Balkan Peninsula, and to make them feel 
that Russia was their only friend. More- 
over, the relations of Austria with Russia 
were not the same as those of England. 
Great Britain and Russia were still at 
peace with one another and maintained 
correct official intercourse, but that was 
about all. There was no pretense of cor- 
diality between them, and one disagree- 
able act more or less meant little. But 
Austria was theoretically an ally of Russia 
and did not wish to give unnecessary of- 
fence. Besides, unknown to London, 

* Wertheimer, iii, p. 28. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRIA 125 



Andrassy had in reserve his agreement of 
January 15, which, if it were carried out, 
as he meant that it should be, would safe- 
guard Austrian interests. It was better 
to wait and to watch the course of events, 
while not neglecting precautions for the 
future. He therefore declined all English 
suggestions of immediate alliance, and 
proposed instead a secret interchange of 
declarations by which the two powers 
bound themselves to uniform but separate 
diplomatic, and, if need be in the future, 
to joint military action.* 

To this suggestion the English agreed. 
For many reasons they were anxious to 
see the war brought to an end as soon as 
possible. While deeply disliking and dis- 
trusting Russia and determined to oppose 
her advance, they did feel a certain sym- 
pathy for the Christians under Turkish 
rule and for their aspirations, whereas 
Austria's foreign policy has seldom been 
affected by such sentiments. The Eng- 

* Wertheimer, iii, p. 39. 



i 2 6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

lish cabinet, moreover, was not united as 
to what it should do, or just how far Rus- 
sia should be allowed to go in weakening 
the Ottoman empire. The prime min- 
ister himself, Lord Beaconsfield, who 
throughout favored vigorous action, was 
nevertheless disturbed by the fear, felt 
likewise in France, that Bismarck rejoiced 
in the whole Eastern complication and 
wished to profit by it in order to attack 
the French at a moment when they could 
obtain no outside help. On one point the 
English government was clear; under no 
circumstances would it permit the Rus- 
sians to get into the Mediterranean; that 
is to say, it would not consent to any 
change in the clauses of the Treaty of 
Paris which closed the Straits to Russian 
ships of war. For the same reason, it was 
opposed to the creation of a strong Slavic 
state, especially to one on both sides of 
the Balkans and with a seaport on the 
iEgean, for it believed that this state 
would be a vassal of Russia, its creator. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRIA 127 

Here Austria was equally determined. 
There must not be a Great Serbia or a 
Great Bulgaria that included Macedonia. 
Such a state, besides being a natural ally 
of Russia, would be a bar to the exten- 
sion of Austrian influence to the south- 
ward, and might even serve as a centre 
of encouragement to discontented Slavic 
elements in the Dual Empire. 

On the 8th of June, 1877, before her 
armies had even passed the Danube, Rus- 
sia had informed England as to the con- 
ditions under which she would be willing 
to concede peace to the Turks, provided 
they asked for it before her troops had 
crossed the Balkans. These conditions, 
which in the main corresponded with 
those in the agreement with Austria, were 
not accepted by England as satisfactory, 
but the matter rested for a time. The 
disasters at Plevna made immediate dis- 
cussion superfluous. But when at last 
Osman Pasha surrendered and the Rus- 
sians swarmed across the mountains, cap- 



128 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

turing or driving before them without 
respite whatever was left of the Turkish 
armies, both Austria and England began 
to make pressing inquiries as to Russian 
intentions and to intimate that they 
themselves ought to be consulted. 

The demand was most unwelcome. It 
often happens toward the close of a war 
that interested third parties not only 
proffer their good offices to bring hostili- 
ties to an end, but even insist that they 
have the right to be heard regarding.the 
terms of peace. Such intervention may 
be hailed by the defeated combatant, but 
the victorious one fears and dislikes it 
and rejects it if he can. In 1871 Bis- 
marck had been worried over the danger 
that some other nation might try to med- 
dle in the peace negotiations between 
Germany and France. In 1878 the Rus- 
sians had special reasons for resenting any 
attempt to rob them of the fruits of suc- 
cess. They believed that they had done 
alone what had been the duty of all Eu- 



FEELING IN RUSSIA 129 

rope, and yet they had been refused as- 
sistance or even a mandate from the other 
powers, though all had made the same 
demands and had met with the same re- 
buffs. The war had proved more diffi- 
cult than the Russians had expected; they 
had suffered heavy losses of men and 
money; they had met with severe reverses 
and some humiliations; and now that they 
had finally triumphed, they were not dis- 
posed to let those who should have helped, 
but had only hampered them, dictate 
what terms of peace they might impose 
on the enemy. The Russian public knew 
nothing of any secret agreement with 
Austria, and the Russian army, after what 
it had gone through and had achieved, 
was as anxious to enter Constantinople in 
triumph as the German one had been to 
enter Paris in 1871. Tsar Alexander II, 
in the correspondence which he still main- 
tained with Emperor Francis Joseph, 
while asserting that Russia would act ac- 
cording to the spirit of the agreement of 



13© THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

January 15, declared that after all that 
had happened it could not be carried out 
to the letter. On January 26, 1878, the 
Russians officially informed Vienna of the 
demands which five days later they im- 
posed on the Turks by the armistice of 
Adrianople. 

By this time the Turks were no longer 
in a position to haggle over terms, but 
Austria and England were, and had no 
thought of allowing themselves to be 
brushed aside. On February 3, Andrassy, 
in a circular note, invited the powers to 
an international conference at Vienna. 
Russia, though agreeing to the idea, ob- 
jected to Vienna as a meeting place, and 
it was decided to hold, not a conference, 
but a formal congress of the powers at 
Berlin. The international situation was 
alarming. On January 28 the English 
ministry had asked Parliament for an 
additional military grant of six million 
pounds. Five days earlier the British fleet 
had been ordered to pass the Darda- 



CONDITIONS IN THE BALKANS 131 

nelles. The order had been recalled, but 
on February 7 it was repeated and was 
carried out. The Russians answered by 
declaring that if the English entered the 
Bosphorus, they themselves would oc- 
cupy Constantinople. The forces of the 
two nations were now almost in sight of 
one another, and any step forward on the 
part of either would have led to immedi- 
ate war. The Balkan Peninsula was in a 
state of wild confusion. The Bulgarians 
had begun to take sanguinary revenge on 
their enemies for the outrages they had 
suffered, and the Mohammedans retali- 
ated when strong enough to do so. A 
Greek army invaded Thessaly, only to be 
withdrawn at the urgent remonstrance of 
the powers, and the promise that the in- 
terests of Greece should be looked after 
at the general settlement. Meanwhile 
the Russians, undeterred by the prepara- 
tions against them and by the forthcom- 
ing congress, continued their negotiations 
with the representatives of the Sultan, till 



132 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

on March 3 they concluded the Peace of 
San Stefano. 

By the terms of this treaty Russia was 
to receive a war indemnity of 1,410,000,- 
000 roubles, an uncertain asset in view of 
the state of Turkish finances; but 1,100,- 
000,000 of it were to be commuted for the 
district of the Dobrudja in eastern Bul- 
garia, and for a territory in Asia including 
the fortress of Kars, the port of Batum, 
and the town of Bayazid. Rumania was 
to obtain her independence, but was to 
cede Bessarabia to Russia and receive the 
Dobrudja in exchange. Serbia and Mon- 
tenegro were to have independence and 
an accession of territory. Bosnia and 
Herzegovina were to get reform and au- 
tonomy. Most important of all was the 
creation of a large Bulgarian vassal prin- 
cipality, extending to the iEgean and to 
the frontiers of Albania. Until it was 
organized it was to be occupied by Rus- 
sian troops, for as long as two years if 
necessary. 



THE PEACE OF SAN STEFANO 133 

The news of this treaty excited loud 
clamors. Mohammedans in Bulgaria, 
Greeks, Rumanians, and even Serbians 
protested violently. These outcries Rus- 
sia could disregard, but not the opposition 
of England, who now refused to attend 
the proposed congress unless the whole 
San Stefano agreement should be sub- 
mitted to it for discussion and modifica- 
tion. On April i Lord Salisbury, who 
had succeeded Lord Derby as foreign sec- 
retary, sent a circular note to the pow- 
ers, sharply criticising the treaty. Mili- 
tary preparations were feverishly pushed. 
Lord Beaconsfield startled Europe by the 
despatch of Indian troops to Malta, as an 
indication that in case of hostilities Brit- 
ain could count on the resources not only 
of the United Kingdom but of her whole 
vast empire — a foretaste of what she was 
to do on a much larger scale a generation 
later. Andrassy, on his part, made no 
secret of his opposition to the terms of 
peace as they stood, and called on the 



134 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

Austro-Hungarian delegations for an ex- 
tra military credit of 60,000,000 gulden. 
The government of Tsar Alexander II 
now found itself in just the position it had 
feared from the beginning, but had not 
succeeded in avoiding. Its victorious 
armies stretched as far as the gates of 
Constantinople, but their flanks and rear 
were at the mercy of an Austrian attack; 
and whereas Russia could not count on an 
ally, Austria would be joined by England, 
and also by Rumania, who was intensely 
exasperated at seeing the aid she had fur- 
nished at a critical moment requited by a 
demand for a cession of her territory. 
Worst of all was the patent fact that Bis- 
marck stood behind Austria. He had 
encouraged the policy of Andrassy from 
the start; indeed, he has been accused 
of having suggested it; this is probably 
an exaggeration, but it is easy to un- 
derstand why he should have wished 
to turn the energies and ambitions of 
Austria to the eastward, and even have 



THE PEACE OF SAN STEFANO 135 

looked upon her, up to a certain point, 
as the German advance guard in that 
part of the world. None could say when 
he would think the time had come for the 
formidable intervention of Germany, an 
intervention that might have results for 
Russia far more disastrous than those of 
the Crimean war. 

England by herself was less to be 
feared. She could hardly send aid suffi- 
cient to enable the Turks to prolong their 
resistance with success, and the Russians 
believed that from Central Asia they 
could make trouble for her in Afghanistan 
and India.* But her demands were so 
much like those of Austria that it was 
probable that if either state took up 
arms it would have the support of the 
other. The conflict that had just ended 
had proved unexpectedly costly in blood 

* Skobelev, the most brilliant Russian general, and one with 
Asiatic experience, had made a plan for the invasion of India 
which he believed feasible. It was at this time that the 
Russian mission was sent to Kabul which alarmed England 
and led to the second Afghan war. 



136 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

and treasure, Russia was exhausted, her 
finances were in bad shape, and her victo- 
rious army near Constantinople was melt- 
ing away by disease, while before its eyes 
the city, at first almost undefended, was 
being provided with fortifications which 
grew more formidable with every week 
that passed. Rage as the Russian gov- 
ernment and people might, the perils of 
a general war were too great for them to 
face, except at the last extremity. To 
avoid disaster they must come to some 
sort of terms with their rivals. 

Bismarck, with his usual common sense, 
had insisted that the Congress of Berlin 
should not meet until all serious points in 
dispute had been settled by preliminary 
agreement. Gradually this was accom- 
plished. Though England yielded more 
than had been expected at St. Petersburg, 
most of the concessions were made by 
Russia, who by three secret compacts, 
signed in London on May 30, gave up 
her creation of a Great Bulgaria, but 



THE CYPRUS CONVENTION 137 

kept Bessarabia in Europe and Batum 
and Kars (but not Bayazid) in Asia. 

But while the British government was 
reducing the gains of Russia, it was also 
providing itself with securities for the 
future. By the Cyprus Convention,* 
signed June 4, it guaranteed to the Turks 
from Russian aggression the rest of their 
possessions in Asia, in return for which 
the Porte undertook "to introduce neces- 
sary reforms, to be agreed upon later be- 
tween the two powers, into the govern- 
ment, and for the protection of the Chris- 
tian and other subjects of the Porte in 
these territories." And in order that 
Great Britain might the more easily de- 
fend and protect these territories (the 
Turks knew nothing of the Anglo-Russian 
arrangement signed five days before), she 
was to receive the island of Cyprus to 
occupy and administer. Having thus 
sanctioned in her own case the principle of 

* Also called the Convention of Constantinople. Parlia- 
mentary Papers ; 1878, kxxii, Turkey, no. 36, pp. 3, 4. 



i 3 8 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

appropriating Turkish lands for the good 
of the Ottoman empire, she was in a posi- 
tion to advocate it in the case of her 
friends, and two days later, in one more 
secret agreement, she promised to sup- 
port the views of Austria in regard to 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

After the main difficulties had been sur- 
mounted in advance, the representatives 
of Europe could meet with the expecta- 
tion of a happy result from their labors. 
The celebrated Congress of Berlin was a 
gathering of very distinguished and able 
men, Beaconsfield, Gorchakov, Andrassy, 
Salisbury, and various minor lights, 
presided over with masterful vigor and 
tact by Prince Bismarck, then at the full 
height of his genius and his fame. He 
had hoped that the proceedings would 
last but a few days, and would consist in 
the prompt ratification of the bargains 
made between the great powers, and in 
the submission to them by the smaller 
ones, whose representatives were only al- 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 139 

lowed to appear before the Congress, but 
not to take part in it. Yet in spite of the 
ruthless energy with which Bismarck 
pushed matters through, the Congress 
lasted for a month (June 13 to July 13), 
and there were several disagreeable and 
even critical moments before everything 
was settled. The Bulgarian question, as 
the most difficult, was taken up first, and 
some time passed before every one was 
agreed as to just what boundaries and 
rights should be assigned to the three 
parts into which the Great Bulgaria of 
San Stefano was to be divided: namely, a 
vassal Bulgarian principality, an autono- 
mous province of Eastern Rumelia, and a 
Macedonia. This last was handed back 
to the tender mercies of the Turks, with 
no protection except promises of reforms 
that were never to be carried out, and 
that did not preserve it from another 
thirty years of constantly increasing op- 
pression and misery. On the other hand, 
the Turks had a painful surprise when by 



140 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

previous arrangement their friend, Great 
Britain, proposed that Bosnia and Herze- 
govina should be handed over to their 
other friend, Austria. When they at- 
tempted to object they were browbeaten 
by Bismarck and freely lectured on the 
dangers of obstinacy. Russia, bound by 
her agreements, was unable to do anything, 
and the Turks, left unsupported, yielded 
in the end. It was voted that Austria 
should occupy and administer the two 
provinces, and should also occupy the dis- 
trict of Novibazar. The Rumanians pro- 
tested in vain at being obliged to cede 
Bessarabia. They met with some sym- 
pathy but no aid. Serbia and Monte- 
negro were granted accessions of territory, 
and Montenegro, thanks to Russian in- 
sistence, was to have a seaport on the 
Adriatic, though without the right of 
policing its waters, which was put in Aus- 
trian hands. The Russians obtained Kars 
and Batum, but had to declare an inten- 
tion of making Batum a free port. Their 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 141 

war indemnity of 300,000,000 roubles was 
left to them, but as it was stipulated that 
this should have no precedence over other 
Turkish debts, the prospect that it would 
ever be paid was remote. 

Shortly before the Congress came to a 
close, it was astonished, the Russian dele- 
gates most disagreeably so, by the an- 
nouncement of the Cyprus Convention. 
Other territorial changes were suggested 
in private discussion, but got no further. 
Various minor matters were attended to, 
including a vague promise of a rectifica- 
tion of boundary for the Greeks and of 
reforms for the Armenians, and a stipula- 
tion that whatever was left of the decrees 
of the Congress of Paris and of the Lon- 
don Conference should be still regarded 
as binding. The members of the high 
assembly then departed to their homes, 
among them Lord Beaconsfield, who on 
his return proclaimed to an admiring 
throng that he had brought back ' peace 
with honor/ 



CHAPTER III 

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 marks 
one of the turning points in the history of 
the Eastern Question. The changes in 
the map made or consecrated there were 
almost revolutionary in their extent. In 
1856, at the Congress of Paris, the pow- 
ers had attempted to rejuvenate and to 
fortify the Ottoman empire. They had 
freed it from the Russian menace, they 
had guaranteed its integrity, they had 
renounced the right of interference in its 
internal affairs, and they had expressed 
kindly approval of its projects of reform. 
It was the spoilt child of Europe. In 
1878 it fared differently. Friends, ene- 
mies, former vassals, while squabbling 
with each other, were one and all ready 
to possess themselves of its territory. 
Its wishes were the last thing that any 
142 



ATTITUDE OF THE TURKS 143 

one thought of consulting, and its prom- 
ises imposed upon nobody. No wonder 
that the Turks felt every man's hand to 
be against them, and that, far from carry- 
ing out the mandates of the Congress in a 
compliant and cheerful manner, they 
adopted a policy of passive resistance, 
which they pushed as far as they dared. 
Nothing in the nature of reform was done 
or even attempted for Macedonia or Ar- 
menia; the Bosnian Mohammedans were 
secretly instigated to resist Austrian oc- 
cupation; the Albanians were played off 
against the demands of Montenegro, un- 
til a joint naval demonstration of the 
powers and the threat of other measures 
finally brought the Porte to terms and to 
the keeping of its promises. In the mat- 
ter of the extension of the Greek bound- 
ary, Turkey, not unnaturally, showed no 
inclination to grant anything. It was in 
vain that the powers took up the matter 
and decided she must yield Thessaly and 
Epirus; she remained obstinate, till in the 



144 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

end she wore down their insistence and 
managed by a final agreement, in 1880, to 
keep most of Epirus, to the wrath of the 
Greeks. 

But the Turks were not the only people 
dissatisfied with the results of the Con- 
gress. The anger of the Russians was 
still hotter. They had fought what they 
believed was the fight of Europe and of 
humanity, they had shed their blood and 
spent their treasure without stint, and in 
the hour of victory their hand had been 
stayed, the other nations had combined 
against them, their fair compensation had 
been cut down, while their jealous rivals, 
Austria and England, had helped them- 
selves to whatever Turkish lands were 
to their liking. At Berlin Russia had 
found herself without a friend. Even 
Germany, the ally who owed so much 
to her, had adopted an attitude of lofty 
neutrality, which was only a mask for her 
support of Austria. 

Most of the smaller states were no 



BULGARIA i4S 



better pleased. The Bulgarians had, in- 
deed, not a little to be thankful for when 
they compared their situation with what 
it had been two years earlier, but they had 
seen the brimming cup dashed from their 
lips. The Great Bulgaria of San Stefano 
had been partitioned, and much of it had 
been handed back more or less completely 
to the Turks. In consequence, the dis- 
appointment of the Bulgarians was in- 
tense. Far from resigning themselves to 
their new lot, they never gave up the 
hope of regaining what had once been 
promised to them, and the chief historical 
importance of the Bulgaria of San Ste- 
fano has been that it created for a nation 
an ideal they have pursued unswervingly 
ever since. 

Serbia was now independent and en- 
larged, as was Montenegro, who had ob- 
tained her long-coveted seaport, but both 
these states bitterly resented the Austrian 
occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
which were inhabited by their kinsmen, 



146 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

and which they had desired for them- 
selves. They also disliked the Austrian 
occupation of Novibazar, which separated 
them from one another. Greece was 
much dissatisfied with the smallness of her 
acquisitions, and she regarded the new 
Bulgaria as a dangerous rival for territory 
which she had long hoped might some 
day be hers. Altogether, the outlook for 
future harmony in the Balkans was not 
promising. 

Even the two powers that had fared 
best could not, as later events have 
proved, look back on their success with 
complete satisfaction. Great Britain 
may have obtained 'peace with honor,' 
though not every one thought so, but she 
soon learned that she had been egregiously 
mistaken in her estimate of the future re- 
lations between the Russians and the Bul- 
garians, and she had cause to regret that 
she had opposed the creation of the Great 
Bulgaria, which would thereafter have 
given a different aspect to the history of 



ENGLAND AND TURKEY 147 

the Balkan Peninsula, and would have 
saved Europe the perplexities and horrors 
of the Macedonian question. By the Cy- 
prus Convention, England assumed a 
guarantee for the integrity of Asiatic 
Turkey. This, luckily for herself, she has 
never been called upon to make good, but 
she also assumed an obligation to protect 
the Armenians, an obligation that was to 
weigh heavily on her in after-times, and 
that she has found herself painfully un- 
able to fulfil. With the Turks her rela- 
tions soon underwent a radical change. 
After the fall of the Beaconsfield ministry 
in 1880 she ceased to be what she had 
been for the previous half century, the 
protector to whom they looked for aid in 
every crisis. At the head of the new 
Liberal government was Mr. Gladstone, 
the champion of oppressed peoples, the 
benefactor of Greece, the author of the 
famous pamphlet on The Bulgarian Hor- 
rors. Henceforth the voice of England 
was no longer that of a friend. The 



148 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

change was to prove lasting. From that 
day to this, Great Britain and the Otto- 
man empire have rarely been on cordial 
terms. 

Even Austria-Hungary was by no 
means so content with her acquisitions as 
might have been expected. Count An- 
drassy had steered his course with skill 
and had brought his vessel of state tri- 
umphantly into port. He had checked 
the ambitions of Russia, he had prevented 
the creation of a powerful South Slav 
kingdom, he had kept open the road to 
Salonica, and he had secured for his sov- 
ereign a territory that might be regarded 
as a compensation for the loss of Lorn- 
bardy and Venetia. Under his guidance 
Austria, excluded from Italy and Ger- 
many, had found a new field for her expan- 
sion, and she had entered into this heri- 
tage not by war and conquest, but in re- 
sponse to the official mandate of Europe, 
which had commissioned her to take over 
these lands from the Turks, who had 



A U STRIA -HUNGARY i 49 

shown themselves incapable of retaining 
them. And yet there were shadows to 
this picture. In Austria, and still more 
in Hungary, the two chief nationalities, 
the Germans and the Magyars, were none 
too well pleased at the strengthening of 
the Slav element in the Dual Empire, 
which sooner or later must result from the 
bringing of over a million more Slavs 
under the rule of Francis Joseph. At the 
last moment Andrassy had decided to get 
the right, not of 'annexation' of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, but only of i occupation 
and administration.' He was probably 
influenced by the difficulty as to the dis- 
position of the two provinces between the 
two halves of the monarchy if they were 
formally annexed, and also by his anxiety 
to obtain the acquiescence of the Turks. 
If he had asked for outright annexation 
he might not have been able to obtain 
the signatures of their plenipotentiaries 
at Berlin, and without them his action 
would bear an appearance of violence 



150 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

which he was eager to avoid. Even as it 
was he had to agree to a secret promise, 
which we may feel sure he never intended 
to keep, that the occupation should be 
only temporary. Doubtless he thought 
that he was getting the substance and 
sacrificing only the shadow,* neverthe- 
less his imperial master and the military 
party at home seem to have been disap- 
pointed, and his resignation a few months 
later may have been connected with this. 
He was never restored to favor, a thing 
Bismarck declared to be incomprehen- 
sible in a country possessing so few states- 
men as Austria. The uncertainty as to 
the ultimate status of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina was destined to remain one of 
the disturbing elements in the Balkans 
for thirty years. When annexation was 
at last formally decreed, it almost led 
to a general conflict. 



* In private he described the Austrian occupation of Bosnia 
as annexation "very badly disguised." H. Drummond Wolff, 
Rambling Recollections, ii, p. 194. 



BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 151 

Andrassy had hoped and believed that 
the territories he had won for his master 
would submit peacefully to their new lot. 
Instead, the Mohammedan population 
rose in savage resistance, which was over- 
come only by the employment of large 
forces and after sharp fighting. The 
Christians accepted the change more 
quietly, for it brought them great bene- 
fits, but the largest element among them, 
the Orthodox Serbs, never renounced their 
nationalistic aspirations. On the con- 
trary, as time went on, these aspirations 
grew constantly stronger. They ren- 
dered good relations between Austria and 
Serbia almost impossible, till they cul- 
minated, in 1914, in the tragedy of 
Seraievo, the immediate cause of the 
European war. 

Germany, at the Congress of Berlin, 
had, according to Bismarck's well known 
phrase, played the part of 'the honest 
broker.' She had smoothed over the dif- 
ferences between the other countries and 



152 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

had approved of the division of the spoil 
between them, while asking nothing for 
herself. And yet, disinterested as Bis- 
marck claimed to have been, and dexter- 
ous as his management certainly was, he 
had scant reason to look back on the 
events of the last few months with satis- 
faction. He had, it is true, helped to 
launch Austria on a career of expansion 
to the southeast in sharp rivalry with 
Russia, thereby insuring that the two 
would not combine against him, and 
securing himself against any return on 
the part of Austria to a policy of inter- 
vention in German affairs. This was 
well enough, but the League of the Three 
Emperors, the one that of all others he 
preferred, and the one that precluded 
most completely any combination of 
powers dangerous to Germany, was now, 
if still nominally in existence, a mere 
sham. What was more, he had failed 
in his attempt to aid Vienna without 
alienating St. Petersburg; and though he 



POLICY OF BISMARCK 153 

may have had confidence in the military 
strength of Germany as compared with 
that of her eastern neighbor, never in 
his long career did Bismarck regard the 
attitude of Russia as a matter of small 
importance. As between Austria and 
Russia he had deliberately chosen to 
support the former,* but without swerv- 
ing from this policy he had sought to 
avoid arousing Russian susceptibilities, 
except from delight in annoying and 
humiliating Gorchakov or in occasional 
outbursts of temper. Speaking publicly, 
ten years later, he declared: "My con- 
duct at the congress was such that I 
thought, after it was over: Well, if I 
had not got long ago the highest Russian 
order set in precious stones, I ought to 
get it now." f None the less, his effort 
to retain Russian friendship had resulted 
in failure. To the Russians his boasts of 

* The reasons given by him in his memoirs may be accepted 
as far as they go. 
f Reden, xii, p. 463. 



154 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

what he had done for them appeared 
a mockery. No small services that he 
might have rendered them could obscure 
the fact that, from their point of view, 
Germany under his guidance had in the 
hour of need deserted the friend to whom 
she owed so much. And as the false 
friend arouses more bitterness than the 
open enemy, every one from the Tsar 
down resented the so-called neutrality of 
Germany as keenly as the open hostility 
of England or Austria. 

For popular opinion Prince Bismarck, 
as a rule, cared little, especially for Rus- 
sian opinion. He strove to win the good 
will of the emperor, not that of the na- 
tion, and he abominated the Panslavists, 
who repaid him in kind, but now the Tsar 
and his advisers were as angry as the most 
ardent Panslavist. During the winter of 
1878-79 the newspapers of St. Petersburg 
and Moscow indulged in violent recrimi- 
nations with those of Berlin, even men- 
tioning with favor the idea of a Franco- 



FEELING OF THE TSAR 155 

Russian alliance. In the reorganization 
and redistribution of the Russian armies 
that followed the war with Turkey, the 
troops stationed in Poland were strength' 
ened to an extent that excited alarm in 
Germany, where this action was regarded 
as a sign of ill will. On their side the 
Russian government, and especially the 
emperor, were irritated by what they be- 
lieved to be the unfriendly attitude of the 
German representatives in the interna- 
tional commission determining the bound- 
aries of Bosnia. 

The sincere admiration and affection 
that the Tsar, a man of frank, impulsive 
nature, had long felt for his aged uncle, 
the Kaiser, and the many years of close 
intimacy between the two, made his dis- 
appointment and resentment the more 
keen. Was this the gratitude to which 
he was entitled ? Had not Emperor 
William himself written in 1871 : "Prussia 
will never forget that she owes it to you 
that the war did not assume the most ex- 



156 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



treme dimensions. May God bless you 
for it." * At last, unable to restrain his 
feelings longer, Alexander II poured out 
his grievances to the German ambassador 
at St. Petersburg and ended with a warn- 
ing, and a week later wrote to his im- 
perial uncle a letter f complaining in a 
tone almost of menace of the conduct of 
Germany, which he ascribed chiefly to 
Bismarck's resentment against Gorcha- 
kov.J There was more truth than tact 

* Politische Correspondent Kaiser Wilhelm's /, p. 302. 

t He wrote at the same time a similar letter to Emperor 
Francis Joseph, if we may trust Bismarck's statement to St. 
Vallier. Chaudordy, La France en 1889, p. 261. 

I "I understand perfectly that you are anxious to maintain 
your good relations with Austria, but I do not understand 
why it is to the interests of Germany to sacrifice those of 
Russia. Is it worthy of a real statesman to put into the 
scale a personal quarrel when it is a question of the interests 
of two great states born to live on good terms with one 
another and when one of them rendered the other, in 1870, a 
service which according to your own words you said you 
would never forget ? I should not have presumed to remind 
you of this, but the situation is becoming too serious for me 
to conceal from you the fears that are harassing me of con- 
sequences that might be disastrous to our two countries. May 
God preserve us from them and be your guide." H. Kohl, 
Wegweiser durch Bismarck's Gedanken und Erinnerungen , 
p. 170. 



THE TSAR'S LETTER 157 

in his remarks, and the letter greatly- 
incensed Emperor William. Bismarck 
profited by the opportunity. He had 
just heard of the forthcoming resignation 
of Andrassy, which had filled him with 
alarm, as perhaps meaning the triumph 
of clerical and anti- Prussian influences at 
Vienna and a change in Austrian policy. 
Although he had soon been reassured on 
this point, he deeply regretted the re- 
tirement of a statesman whose aims had 
accorded so well with his own. On 
August 13 he had expressed by telegraph 
a desire to see Count Andrassy again at 
any time and place that was convenient 
to him. Andrassy replied on the 15th 
(the day that the letter of the Tsar was 
written), fixing Gastein as the meeting 
place. 

A close alliance between Germany and 
Austria was an idea which Bismarck had 
entertained before and even informally 
suggested. This may seem strange in one 
who had risen to greatness by his reso- 



158 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

lute anti-Austrian policy, which had tri- 
umphed in the war of 1866, and had led 
to the aggrandizement of Prussia and to 
the expulsion of Austria from the German 
Confederation. Yet, much as he had dis- 
liked the previous hollow friendship be- 
tween Vienna and Berlin, which he be- 
lieved to be entirely to the advantage of 
the former, and convinced as he was that 
Prussia could only fulfil her ambitions by 
a successful war with Austria, none the 
less, even before that war was finished, he 
had begun to look forward to better rela- 
tions in the future. The obstinacy with 
which in the hour of victory he had 
stood out against the eager wish of his 
master and of the Prussian military 
leaders for an acquisition of Austrian 
territory, was due only in part to the 
immediate dangers that he perceived in 
case Prussia should show herself im- 
moderate in her demands. It was also 
due to his extraordinary foresight as to 
the advantages of not alienating Austria 



GERMANY, AUSTRIA, AND RUSSIA 159 

permanently, but of leaving the way 
open to a subsequent reconciliation. In 
the League of the Three Emperors, Bis- 
marck had already reaped a first reward 
for this policy, and he was now to reap 
a further one when he believed the mo- 
ment had come to guarantee Germany 
against the consequences of Russian re- 
sentment. 

The friendship between Russia and 
Prussia was of old standing. For over a 
century, since the alliance concluded be- 
tween Catherine II and Frederick the 
Great in 1764, the two countries, although 
at times there had been coolness between 
them, had never been at war with one 
another, except, nominally, during the 
Moscow campaign of Napoleon I. Their 
soldiers had fought side by side at the bat- 
tle of Leipsic and on other glorious fields, 
they had entered Paris in triumph to- 
gether, and Emperor William himself, 
then a boy, had taken part in that trium- 
phant entry. Since then the two coun- 



160 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

tries had often befriended each other to 
the advantage of both. The closely re- 
lated courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg 
had been on intimate terms, and the sov- 
ereigns were bound together by sincere 
mutual affection. But such sentimental 
considerations did not weigh with Bis- 
marck. Earlier in his career the friend- 
ship of Russia had brought him great ben- 
efits for which he had had to pay little in 
return. He was not disposed now to pay 
much and get little. If Russia had been 
willing to give him a free hand against 
France, his attitude might have been dif- 
ferent, but as he later wrote in his mem- 
oirs: "That for Russian policy there is 
a limit beyond which the importance of 
France in Europe must not be decreased 
is explicable. That limit was reached, as 
I believe, at the Peace of Frankfort — a 
fact which in 1870 and 1871 was not so 
completely realized at St. Petersburg as 
five years later. I hardly think that dur- 
ing our war the Russian cabinet clearly 



GERMANY, AUSTRIA, AND RUSSIA 161 

foresaw that, when it was over, Russia 
would have as neighbor so strong and 
consolidated a Germany." * This was 
true, and whatever may have been Bis- 
marck's designs in 1875, the famous war 
scare at least made clear that Russia was 
not minded to permit him to attack 
France. 

Another consideration also weighed 
with him. He says later in his memoirs : 
"In point of material force I held a union 
with Russia to have the advantage," f 
and history has shown that this assump- 
tion was correct. On the other hand, 
Germany had great material force of her 
own, so great that in an alliance between 
her and Austria there could be little doubt 
as to which would be the dominant part- 
ner — as again later events have proved. 
With Russia there was no such prospect. 
To be sure, the time was past when St. 
Petersburg could take with Berlin the 

*fiedanken und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 231. 
t Ibid., ii, p. 234. 



162 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

superior tone used by Emperor Nicholas 
I toward his brother-in-law, King Freder- 
ick William IV. But even so, complete 
docility to German suggestions could 
hardly be expected on the banks of the 
Neva. Russia was too mighty, too proud, 
and too ambitious a state to remain long 
content with the role of second fiddle. 
She would wish to receive at least as 
much as she gave, especially as she be- 
lieved there was a good balance due her 
already, and she would not be likely to 
alienate for long her own liberty of ac- 
tion. There was some ground for the 
fear Bismarck expressed to Shuvalov, 
"that if the German policy confined its 
possibilities to the Russian alliance, and, 
in accordance with the wishes of Russia,,, 
refused all other states, Germany would 
with regard to Russia be in an unequal 
position, because the geographical situa- 
tion and the autocratic constitution of 
Russia make it easier for her to give up 
the alliance than it would be for us." * 

* Gedanken vnd Erinnerungen, ii, p. 225. 



RUSSIA OR AUSTRIA? 163 

This does not mean that under certain 
circumstances, and if paid his price, Bis- 
marck might not have gone back to the 
policy of a close alliance with Russia, 
even, to a certain extent, at Austrian ex- 
pense, and such a policy is probably what 
would have best pleased his sovereign. 
\ But neither Russia nor Germany was 
ready at the last analysis to grant the 
other a perfectly free hand as against 
France and Austria respectively. This 
explains the failure of the offers of 
Radowitz in 1875 and of Werder in the 
following year, and, on the other hand, 
the refusal of Bismarck to the Russian 
proposal for an offensive and defensive 
alliance, made to him in 1877 * and re- 
newed and urged upon him a year later 
by Shuvalov, just before the Congress 
of Berlin. 

To these considerations we may add the 
deeper one of the common nationality and 
history of the Germans in Germany and 

* Tatishchev, Alexander 77, ii, p. 487. See also Gedanken 
und Erinnerungen, ii, p. 220. 



164 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

of those in Austria. For a thousand years 
they had been in the same empire, and 
their present political severance from one 
another dated back scarcely more than a 
decade. Such factors weighed with Bis- 
marck, and he mentions them among the 
reasons for his decision, but we must not 
exaggerate their importance. Though he 
was a German to the core and the chief 
maker of German unity, he had little of 
the spirit of intense nationalism so char- 
acteristic of the next generation; he had 
never belonged to the 'Great Germany' 
party, and without a qualm he had cut 
off ten million Austrian Germans from 
their immemorial connections, just as he 
never worried over the fate of the Ger- 
mans in the Russian Baltic provinces. 
His positive genius was far removed from 
the dreams of the modern Pangermanist. 
He neither rhapsodized over the merits 
of Kultur nor looked forward to an inev- 
itable conflict between Slav and Teuton, 
though he regarded Russian Panslavism 



BISMARCK'S MOTIVES 165 

as a menace. In short, he was a patriot, 
but not a nationalist, clear-sighted and 
practical rather than sentimental or im- 
aginative. He had already shown by his 
conduct throughout the whole Eastern 
crisis that if the League of the Three 
Emperors should break down, and he 
were forced to choose between Austria and 
Russia, it was Austria he would support. 
Now, angered by the attitude of Russia 
since the Congress of Berlin, and fearing 
that in spite of assurances to the contrary 
the retirement of Andrassy might lead to 
a change of policy at Vienna, he deter- 
mined while there was still time to bind 
Germany and Austria together by an alli- 
ance which should put an end to the dan- 
gers that threatened them both. Hav- 
ing, therefore, commented at length on 
the letter of the Tsar, in such a manner 
as to inflame rather than soothe the 
anger of his sovereign, and having sub- 
mitted a draft for a stiff reply, he started 
for Gastein, eager to meet his Austrian 



166 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

friend and to push matters to a con- 
clusion. 

Count Andrassy, on his part, if we may 
trust to a memorandum that he wrote in 
1888, had been aiming for just such a 
result ever since he had become foreign 
minister. It did not, therefore, take long 
for the two statesmen to reach an under- 
standing when they came together at 
Gastein. They agreed that after each 
had obtained the approval of his master, 
Bismarck should proceed to Vienna to 
enter into formal negotiations for an 
Austro-German alliance. The idea was 
immediately approved by Emperor 
Francis Joseph, but the aged German 
emperor was at first quite unfavorable 
to it. Although offended at the tone of 
his nephew, he still clung to the hered- 
itary friendship between Berlin and St. 
Petersburg, and he was just sending 
General Manteuffel with a special mes- 
sage to the Tsar. He also had not en- 
tirely got over his old distrust of Austria. 



ALEXANDROVO 167 



He telegraphed, accordingly, to Gastein, 
forbidding Bismarck's journey to Vienna, 
and only gave his consent after the most 
vigorous remonstrances on the part of 
the chancellor, who declared that his 
own position and further continuation 
in office would be impossible if he were 
to be disavowed in this manner. Em- 
peror William yielded with reluctance, 
and presently, in answer to an invitation 
from Tsar Alexander, decided to meet him 
and clear up the situation. Unwelcome 
as such a step was to Bismarck at this 
juncture, he was unable to do anything, 
except submit to his master a long memo- 
randum on the relations between Ger- 
many, Russia, and Austria, in the past, 
present, and future. The document, how- 
ever, seems to have had little effect. On 
September 3, at the Russian frontier town 
of Alexandrovo, uncle and nephew greeted 
each other once more. All the clouds be- 
tween them soon vanished.* The Tsar 

* For an account of the meeting, see Tatishchev, Alexander 
II, ii, p. 550. 



168 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

expressed his profound regret if anything 
he had written had offended his uncle, 
and declared that his feelings and pur- 
poses had been misunderstood in Ger- 
many. He brought forward his minister 
of war, General Miliutin, the man sup- 
posed to be the leader of the anti-German 
faction, to aver that there was no truth 
in the charge, and that the recent Rus- 
sian military movements were not in 
any sense hostile. The two monarchs 
parted completely reconciled, and with 
Emperor William satisfied that his chan- 
cellor's suspicions of Russia were without 
real foundation. He therefore rejected 
flatly the idea of an Austro-German al- 
liance directed against Russia, declaring 
that such an act would now be dis- 
honorable and treacherous on his part. 

This brought matters to a crisis. Bis- 
marck, from Gastein, where he was kept 
by the state of his health, continued to 
assail his master with arguments and 
with threats of resignation. In answer 



CROSS CURRENTS 169 

the emperor talked of abdicating rather 
than stooping to a dishonorable act. 
Only after obstinate resistance did he 
unwillingly consent to negotiations for 
a defensive alliance, but it must not be 
one that was specifically directed against 
Russia. 

On September 21 Prince Bismarck ar- 
rived in Vienna. He was well received. 
The discussions between him and Count 
Andrassy and the drawing up of the 
treaty lasted but three days. Andrassy 
declined Bismarck's suggestion that the 
pact should be made part of the constitu- 
tion of both empires, thus bringing them 
into a permanent relation with one an- 
other that would recall in a measure the 
Germanic federation dissolved by the war 
of 1866. He also refused to sign any gen- 
eral treaty of alliance, declaring that Aus- 
tria had no quarrel with France and 
wished to keep on good terms with her, 
partly out of consideration for England. 
As Germany was amply able to hold her 



i 7 o TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

own against France without assistance, 
just as Austria was against Italy, an al- 
liance for such contingencies was not 
necessary or desirable. The only real 
menace was from Russia, or from a com- 
bination of Russia and some other power, 
and this was all that should be provided 
against. On this point we may suspect 
that Bismarck merely made a show of 
following the instructions given him. If 
he had cared at bottom, he would have 
displayed more vigor and obstinacy than 
he did in contesting Andrassy's argu- 
ments. As it was, he soon yielded to 
them, and in a memorandum to his em- 
peror, on September 24, recommended 
the ratification of the agreement that 
had been reached. 

This led to another acute crisis. Em- 
peror William asserted repeatedly that 
the proposed treaty would be an act of 
ill faith on his part, after the assurances 
he had just interchanged with the Tsar. 
Again he talked of abdicating rather than 



EMPEROR WILLIAM AND BISMARCK 171 

consenting to such a thing. Why was 
not the best and simplest solution to ad- 
mit Russia herself to the pact, and thus 
renew and strengthen the League of the 
Three Emperors ? On the other hand, 
Bismarck once more came forward with 
the threat of his own resignation. He 
called to his assistance the chief men of 
the empire. He assured himself of the 
approval of the king of Bavaria, and he 
called on Prince Hohenlohe, the German 
ambassador in Paris, to add his argu- 
ments. Von Moltke brought the whole 
weight of his military authority and in- 
fluence to bear on the same side. The 
crown prince also supported it with en- 
thusiasm. The imperial ministers were 
unanimous in its favor, and announced 
their intention of resigning if the treaty 
were not ratified. Thus the aged emperor 
found himself alone. Most reluctantly he 
yielded to the pressure put upon him. 
The only concession that he was able to 
obtain was that though for the present 



172 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

the terms of the pact were to remain 
secret, he might in case of need inform 
the Tsar of its scope. To this Andrassy 
consented, and on October 7, 1879, the 
Austro-German alliance was signed by 
him and by Prince Reuss, the German 
ambassador in Vienna. 

The news of what had been done soon 
transpired. In both Germany and Aus- 
tria it was greeted with loud applause. 
There were a few dissentients, especially 
in Austria among the clericals and the 
Slavs, but in the main both countries felt 
that the alliance was a natural one, 
founded on the interests of both, against 
a common danger. To the former parti- 
sans of Great Germany it seemed a par- 
tial realization of their once cherished 
dreams, bringing together all Germans, if 
not into one confederation, at least into 
close and, they hoped, permanent part- 
nership. It threatened no one, for it was 
purely defensive in character, but by its 
existence and power it formed a dam 



TEE AUSTRO-GERMAN ALLIANCE 173 

against the progress of Panslavism, while 
it helped to keep France quiet by making 
her feel her isolation. 

In England, still under the Conserva- 
tive and anti-Russian ministry of Lord 
Beaconsfield, the news was well received. 
Lord Salisbury, in a speech at Manchester 
on October 17, hailed it as "good tidings 
of great joy." In France, as was to be 
expected, it aroused apprehension. The 
French feared that Bismarck might now 
attack them without fear of the restraint 
which had been imposed upon him in 
1875. He gave no indication, however, 
of any such design. While he was nego- 
tiating at Vienna, he had expressly sought 
out the French ambassador there and 
had spoken to him most reassuringly as 
to German intentions. Indeed, his at- 
titude during and after the Congress 
of Berlin was more friendly than it had 
been for years. 

There remained Russia. Even with- 
out knowing the exact contents of the 



174 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

AustroGerman treaty, the Russians real- 
ized that the alliance was directed against 
them and resented it accordingly. But 
the Tsar took the matter quietly. On 
November 4 Emperor William wrote a 
letter to his "dear Nephew and Friend," 
enclosing the preamble to the treaty as 
a memorandum and explaining with ob- 
vious difficulty and confusion the reasons 
for his action. He even went to the 
length of declaring: "I like to say to 
myself that you will judge the principles 
embodied in this important act at their 
true value, and that you will agree with 
them as strengthening the League of 
the Three Emperors, which since the year 
1873 has rendered Europe such signal 
services." Alexander II replied that he 
was glad "that this political transaction 
contains absolutely nothing contrary to 
my wishes," and that "I like to see in 
it the return to that perfect understand- 
ing between the three emperors which, as 
you remark with so much truth, has ren- 



ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA 175 

dered the greatest services to Europe."* 
The words of the Tsar may have been 
tinged with irony, but he continued on 
good terms with his uncle until his own 
death by assassination on March 13, 1881. 
This event had little immediate influ- 
ence on the international situation. The 
new Tsar, Alexander III, was a man of 
limited education and with no great range 
of ideas, profoundly honest, slow, con- 
servative, religious, not to say bigoted, 
with a high sense of his duties and of his 
position. He had come to the throne 
under the most tragic circumstances, and, 
after a short moment of hesitation, he 
resolutely set his face against liberalism, 
and reverted to the traditions of undi- 
luted autocracy. With stern determina- 
tion he stamped the revolutionary move- 
ment almost out of existence and followed 
a firm reactionary policy. In foreign af- 
fairs he was nationalistic, with none of 
the cosmopolitanism that had character- 

* Kohl, Wegweiscr, pp. 178-182. 



176 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

ized his predecessors for the last century 
and a half. But little as he loved foreign 
nations, he was a sincere lover of peace 
and intent on preserving it, and by nature 
he was adverse to adventure or to wanton 
enterprise. He established friendly rela- 
tions with his great-uncle at Berlin, and 
he, and still more his quiet, moderate, 
and cautious foreign minister, M. de 
Giers, were soon on an amicable footing 
with Bismarck. The tension with Aus- 
tria also relaxed, as was shown by a secret 
treaty signed in 1881,* according to 
which, in return for Austrian consent to 
a union of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, 
"si elle se faisait par la force des choses," 
Russia agreed that Austria might, when 
she chose, convert her occupation of Bos- 
nia and Herzegovina into actual annexa- 
tion. 
The difficulty Austria had experienced 



* See the article on Kalnoky by Friedjung in the Bio- 
graphisches Jahrbuch, March, 1909. See also Denkwurdig- 
keiten des Fiirsten Hohenlohe-Schillingsfiirst, ii, p. 311. 



AUSTRIA AND SERBIA 177 

in pacifying these two provinces led her 
to postpone for nearly a year longer her 
occupation of Novibazar, which was 
carried out, this time without resistance, 
in September, 1879. She thus kept open 
her passage to the southward and in- 
serted herself between Serbia and Mon- 
tenegro. She now possessed almost irre- 
sistible means of pressure upon Serbia, 
an inland state whose commerce with 
western Europe must pass through her 
territories, and whose capital, Belgrade, 
could be reached across the river by 
Austrian guns and could be threatened 
with immediate attack. 

Besides this, the Serbians had been 
angered by the fact that Russia had 
assigned to Bulgaria, at the Peace of 
San Stefano, lands they regarded as 
theirs and had also supported Bulgarian 
claims at Berlin.* Serbia got these lands 



* On Serbia at the Congress of Berlin, »ee the article by 
Dr. Vladan Georgevitch in the Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique, 
1891, pp. 483-SS2. 



178 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

in the end * with the aid of Austria, who 
had opposed her expansion in other direc- 
tions and to whose dictation she had to 
submit in railway and commercial affairs. 
Continuing her pressure, Austria next 
succeeded in winning over to her policy 
Prince (later King) Milan, a man of intel- 
ligence, but of untrustworthy character, 
who felt far from secure on his throne. In 
1 88 1 he brought back from Vienna the 
draft of a treaty which he persuaded his 
minister of foreign affairs to sign. It was 
then put away in the archives, and very- 
few even of the prime ministers and min- 
isters of foreign affairs of Serbia knew of 
its existence for the next dozen years, by 
which time it had come to be regarded 
as inoperative. 

By this treaty of June 28, i88i,f in or- 
der to establish a "perfect friendship" 
between the two states, Serbia bound her- 

* The territory about Pirot. Bulgarian claims extended as 
far as Nish. 

t For an account of it, see the article by Stojan Protitch in 
the Fortnightly Review for May, 1909. 



AUSTRIA AND SERBIA 179 

self not to tolerate any intrigues against 
Austria-Hungary, who gave a reciprocal 
assurance, promising also to support 
the dynasty and to assist Serbia and 
her interests with other European cab- 
inets; Serbia in return undertook "not 
to negotiate with or conclude political 
treaties with any other states without 
previous agreement with Austria-Hun- 
gary." The two powers promised each 
other mutual friendship and neutral- 
ity in the event of war with a foreign 
state. Even if this treaty did not mean 
any great accession of strength to Aus- 
tria, it helped to keep Serbia in the posi- 
tion of her client in Balkan affairs. 

But strong and satisfactory as the Aus- 
tro-German alliance was, it was capa- 
ble of being improved or at least supple- 
mented by the accession of another 
power, and that power, after earlier hesi- 
tation and reluctance, was now eager to 
be admitted into partnership. 

The young kingdom of Italy had been 



180 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

completed by the occupation of Rome in 
September, 1870. Unlike Prussia, Italy 
had not reached greatness by brilliant 
victories of her own; her success had 
been due not only to her efforts, but also 
to the misfortunes of others, which she 
had turned to good account. After the 
achievement of her unity, she still feared 
an Austrian attempt to reverse the ver- 
dict of 1859 and of 1866, and that this 
time she would not have a French or a 
Prussian ally. She feared still more that 
some power might take up the cause of 
the Pope and demand the restoration of 
his temporal authority, and she believed 
that the greatest danger in this respect 
threatened her from the side of France. 

The relations between France and Italy 
extend over a period of more than two 
thousand five hundred years: that is to 
say, to the beginning of the known his- 
tory of each. Even before the founding 
of Rome, Celtic tribes from Gaul had 
penetrated into the heart of the peninsula 



FRANCE AND ITALY 181 

and settled there as conquerors. Rome 
itself was captured by the Gauls in 390 
b. c, and as late as the time of Caesar, 
though Cisalpine Gaul had long been 
under Roman rule, the frontier of Italy 
proper was not the Alps but the Apen- 
nines and the Rubicon. On the other 
hand, during the centuries that Gaul 
was part of the Roman possessions, it be- 
came so thoroughly Latinized that, like 
Spain, it retained its Latin character in 
spite of a period of barbarian conquest 
and domination. Only its eastern por- 
tion was permanently Germanized; in the 
rest of the land the intruders were soon 
absorbed. Therefore in this present age 
of nationalistic consciousness Frenchmen 
and Italians regard themselves as bound 
together by ties of blood, of identical cul- 
tural origin, and of common civilization 
and ideals. Questionable as these ties 
may be from a scientific point of view, the 
belief in them and the sentimental value 
attached to them are real. 'The sister- 



i8a' THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

hood of the Latin nations/ to use a favor- 
ite term, represents the same sort of 
vague nationalistic ideals as Panslavism, 
Panteutonism, and other movements of 
the kind. 

This feeling of sisterhood has not kept 
the Latin nations on especially good 
terms with one another in the past. 
Much as the French have owed not only 
to Roman but to Renaissance Italian cul- 
ture, they have none the less invaded 
Italy again and again for frankly selfish 
reasons. Their first appearance as bene- 
factors, though still as plunderers, was 
in the days of the French Revolution, 
when they brought in temporarily a cer- 
tain measure of political liberty, long 
unknown south of the Alps. In the nine- 
teenth century, liberals in France, as else- 
where, sympathized with Italian aspira- 
tions for freedom and political unity. 
Napoleon III, himself an Italian almost 
as much as a Frenchman, was moved by 
sentimental considerations as well as by 



FRANCE AND ITALY 183 

calculation when he took up the Italian 
cause and declared war on Austria in 
1859. His two victories of Magenta and 
Solferino soon led to the emancipation of 
nearly the whole peninsula (if not quite 
in the way he had intended), and though 
he had his hesitations and misgivings, and 
was not willing to abandon the Pope al- 
together, he remained to the end of his 
reign the sincere friend of Italy. By his 
attitude in 1866 he helped her to obtain 
Venice. 

For all this the Italians were grateful to 
him and to France. They had, however, 
grievances which loomed large in their 
eyes. The Peace of Villafranca, by which 
Napoleon, in obedience to sound military 
and political considerations, halted his 
successful campaign and left Venice for 
some years longer in the hands of Aus- 
tria, was a sad disappointment to the 
Italians, whose hopes had been inflamed 
by the emperor's ill-advised proclamation 
that he would free Italy "from the Alps 



184 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

to the Adriatic." It is true that he still 
gave them his support, and it would have 
been impossible for them to achieve their 
unity without his protection against Aus- 
trian interference, a protection to which 
they owed as much as to the genius of 
Cavour or to the enterprise of Garibaldi. 
But when their success went much fur- 
ther than he had foreseen, he had exacted, 
in compensation for his services and for 
the sacrifices of France, the cession of 
Nice and Savoy. Nice has in the past 
been at times connected with Italy, at 
times with France, and geographically be- 
longs with either. The peasants in the 
country about speak a dialect of Proven- 
cal, but by i860 the town of Nice had 
become Italianized, and it was here that 
Garibaldi was born. The duchy of Savoy 
is situated on the French side of the 
Alps and has never been Italian in lan- 
guage, but it was the home of the dynasty 
that had now been raised to the Italian 
throne, and as such was dear to them. 



FRANCE AND ITALY 185 

The enforced cession of these two dis- 
tricts, although not objected to by the 
inhabitants themselves, has not been for- 
given by the Italians to this day. When- 
ever relations have been strained between 
Italy and France, the eyes of those who 
dream of Italia Irredenta — and every 
Italian patriot has dreamed of it more or 
less — have turned in the direction of Nice 
and Savoy, and of the island of Corsica, 
which once belonged to the republic of 
Genoa and has been French only since 
the middle of the eighteenth century. 

Another cause of Italian discontent was 
the continued occupation of Rome by 
French troops, in deference to the wishes 
of the clerical party in France. When the 
garrison was withdrawn in 1867, Gari- 
baldi's ill-advised expedition against the 
city led to its prompt return, and to the 
painful incident of the hero's defeat at 
Mentana. In 1870 Italy, if given per- 
mission to occupy Rome, was ready to 
join with France against Prussia, her 



186 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

partner of four years earlier. But as 
Napoleon refused his consent until too 
late, the Italians, without running any 
risks, profited by his disasters, and after 
the withdrawal of the French garrison 
seized the Eternal City. 

Meanwhile in France there was much 
division of opinion. Many were enthu- 
siastic for the liberation of Italy and 
proud of the part their country had taken 
in it, but the powerful clerical party con- 
demned the policy of the emperor alto- 
gether and supported the territorial claims 
of the Pope. There were Frenchmen, too, 
who, though not clerical in their sympa- 
thies, yet could not shut their eyes to the 
fact that there were disadvantages in the 
creation on the southeastern frontier of 
France of a new great power and future 
rival in the Mediterranean, whose ambi- 
tions might some day conflict with hers. 
Granted that the aspirations of the 
Italians toward national unity were, like 
those of the Germans, legitimate in them- 



FRANCE AND ITALY 187 

selves, was it, after all, the business of 
France to further them from sentimental 
reasons when their success must diminish 
her own relative position among Euro- 
pean states ?* 

In the later part of the Franco-Ger- 
man war, a number of Italian volunteers 
served in the French army under Gari- 
baldi, and though neither they nor their 
leader achieved much success, the senti- 
ment that inspired their action was ap- 
preciated. But after the Peace of Frank- 
fort the relations between France and 
Italy became worse. The Italians had 
grown weary of being reminded of a 
debt which they regarded as being by 
this time paid or cancelled, and indeed 
many of them, including King Victor 
Emmanuel, felt that they had owed 
gratitude to Napoleon III rather than 
to the people he had governed. They 

* "Napoleon III said to me in Paris that he planned to 
make a powerful nation out of Italy. I replied, 'Your Maj- 
esty, that is a ward that may become stronger than his guard- 
ian.' " Poschinger, Also sprach Bismarck, iii, p. 151. 



188 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

had little sympathy for the French repub- 
lic, whose example might encourage the 
republican party in Italy, though they 
feared a Bourbon restoration, believing 
that it would mean a French intervention 
in behalf of the Pope. This fear was 
strengthened by the outspoken advocacy 
of the papal claims by many French 
royalists, including the Pretender, the 
Comte de Chambord himself, and also 
by the fact that until October, 1874, the 
French government unwisely kept a man- 
of-war stationed at Civita Vecchia, the 
port of Rome. 

The Italians, therefore, began to look 
for friends in other quarters. In 1873 
King Victor Emmanuel visited Vienna 
and Berlin, and there was talk of the 
probable adhesion of Italy to the League 
of the Three Emperors. But these first 
advances led to nothing. The three em- 
pires looked askance at Italy and felt no 
particular need of her friendship. Her 
alliance with Prussia in 1866, although it 



ITALY AND GERMANY 189 

had been profitable to both parties, had 
led to singularly little good feeling be- 
tween them. From first to last they had 
mistrusted one another. The Prussians 
had a poor opinion of Italian military 
capacity, and the Italians, although, 
thanks to the successes of their ally, 
they obtained Venice, were humiliated 
by the course of the war and chagrined 
at the treaty of peace. Bismarck seems 
to have entertained scant liking or re- 
spect for them;* from Austria they could 
hardly expect cordiality, and Russia was 
indifferent. 

In 1877, aroused by rumors of the 
agreement of Reichstadt, the Italian gov- 
ernment sent Francesco Crispi on a mis- 
sion to sound the German chancellor as 
to the possibility of an alliance between 
Italy and Germany against France and 
Austria. f But Bismarck, while express- 

* In 1880 he remarked: "They are like carrion crows on 
the battle-field, that let others provide their food." Busch, 
Bismarck, ii, p. 233. 

t See Crispi's account of the mission in his memoirs. 



ioo THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



ing a willingness to make a defensive 
treaty against France, frankly declared 
that he was on excellent terms with Aus- 
tria and would remain so. In answer to 
Crispi's declaration that Italy could not 
permit Austria to have Bosnia and Her- 
zegovina without compensation for her- 
self, he suggested, not a rectification of 
her immediate frontier, which was what 
Crispi was doubtless hinting at, but that 
she should appropriate Turkish territory 
in Albania. Nothing came of this sug- 
gestion, and at the Congress of Berlin 
Italy neither gained anything herself nor 
dared oppose the gains of Austria. This 
outcome produced disappointment and 
discontent in the peninsula,* which was 
not much allayed by the statement of the 
ministry that "Italy had returned from 
the congress with clean hands"; others 
called it with empty hands. France, too, 

* Crispi declared in a speech at Naples: "We were humiliated 
at Berlin as the last people in Europe; we returned slapped 
and despised." Chiala, Pagine di storia contemporanea, ii, 
p. 17. 



TUNIS 191 



came back from Berlin ' with clean hands/ 
but she had something in her pocket,* 
and that something was an object Italy 
coveted. 

The Roman province of Africa has 
more than once played its part in history. 
From here the Punic city of Carthage 
established her rule over the shores of 
the western Mediterranean and sent her 
ships in the Atlantic as far as Britain 
and down the coasts of Africa. After her 
fall there rose on the same site a new 
Roman Carthage, long the second city in 
the West. Then came the Vandal and 
later the Arab conquest. Of Carthage 
few traces remain, but some miles away 
the city of Tunis had its periods of glory 
as the capital of various Mohammedan 
dynasties. In the sixteenth century it 
was fought over by the Spaniard and the 
Turk, and became the home of a piratical 
state, nominally vassal to the Ottoman 
empire. When the age of piracy came 

* Words of Waddington on leaving the congress. 



i 9 2 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

to an end, its fortunes declined, and by 
the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the regency of Tunis seemed almost 
in a state of dissolution. The rule of its 
sovereign, the Bey, was tyrannical and 
corrupt; the treasury was empty; and 
the first fatal step in outside interference, 
foreign control of finance, had already 
been taken. But the natural resources 
of the country were as great as they had 
been in its brightest days, the soil was 
as fertile, the climate as mild as ever. 
All that it needed to bring back its former 
prosperity was enlightened government 
and foreign capital and enterprise. 

No acquisition overseas could be more 
alluring to the Italians than Tunis. 
Lying at their very door, it would as- 
sure them the possession of the southern 
as well as the northern sides of the nar- 
row passage between the western and 
the eastern halves of the Mediterranean, 
that Mediterranean in which they re- 
garded themselves as the heirs of the 



ITALY AND TUNIS 103 

imperial traditions of Rome. The natural 
conditions of the country were suitable 
for Italian colonization, and its small 
and backward population left plenty of 
land for the immigrants whom Italy's high 
birth rate enabled her to supply in any 
number desired, and who already formed 
much the largest foreign colony there. 
No wonder, then, that as soon as the 
kingdom of Italy was constituted,* and 
even before,f Italians began to talk of the 
necessity of bringing Carthage once more 
under the rule of Rome. 

But if Italy's desire for Tunis was nat- 
ural and legitimate, that of France was 
equally so. Half a century had now 
elapsed since the French, by the capture 
of Algiers, had set foot in North Africa. 

*Mazzini wrote in 1871: "As Morocco turns toward the 
Iberian Peninsula and Algeria toward France, Tunis, the key 
to the central Mediterranean, linked in formation with Sar- 
dinia and Sicily and distant but some twenty-five leagues 
from Sicily, obviously turns toward Italy. . . . To-day the 
French are making eyes at it and will soon possess it, if we 
do not." Scritti, xvi, pp. 153, 154. 

f For instance, in the writings of Gioberti. 



194 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

In the course of time, after years of ardu- 
ous fighting and enormous expense, with 
many hesitations and mistakes but with 
stubborn persistence, they had built up 
a colony that was just beginning to flour- 
ish. The possession of Algeria not only 
strengthened France in the Mediterra- 
nean; it also furnished her with compen- 
sation for what she had lost in Europe, 
as well as for the colonies of which she 
had been deprived in the previous cen- 
tury. Although the French settlers in 
Algeria were and always will be a minority 
of the population, they can give it their 
civilization and perhaps in time their lan- 
guage, making it, if not an African 
France, at least a fresh field for the ex- 
pression of French character and genius, 
one distant less than a day's sail from the 
mother country, and capable of being 
united to it by strong and permanent ties. 
Algeria itself, however, is only the central 
portion of a region known a century ago 
as the Barbary states, the whole of which 



FRANCE IN NORTH AFRICA 105 

belongs naturally in the same hands, for 
it has the same general features and is 
inhabited by the same peoples. Geo- 
graphically it has a well defined unity of 
its own. Its political divisions have been 
the result not of natural formation but of 
historical accident. 

As soon as the French began to feel at 
home in Algeria they inevitably turned 
their eyes toward their neighbors east 
and west, the regency of Tunis and the 
empire of Morocco, the two other portions 
of this North African region.* Both were 
in such condition that they bade fair 
sooner or later to come under the control 
of some European power. Napoleon III, 
in his dreamy idealism, may have deemed 
that France should content herself with 
Algeria and should leave Tunis to Italy 
and Morocco to Spain. Other and more 
practical Frenchmen felt that if ever the 



* Tripoli, though counted as one of the Barbary states, is 
separated from Tunis by the desert, which here reaches the 
coast. 



196 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

time should come when these natural 
prolongations of Algeria must fall into 
foreign hands, those hands must be 
French. From every point of view — po- 
litical, commercial, military — for Algeria 
to have as a direct neighbor the territory 
of another great European power would 
be disastrous, no matter how friendly 
that power might be. This was partic- 
ularly true as regarded Tunis, which on 
the map goes as obviously with Algeria 
as does Portugal with Spain, or Sicily 
with Italy. In consequence, France 
strove, on the whole with success, to 
establish a preponderating influence in 
Tunis, and she emphatically refused to 
recognize the claims which the Sultan 
of Turkey still put forth to suzerainty 
there. 

At the court of the Bey, as at many 
other African and Asiatic posts, the chief 
opponent to the French consul was 
usually the British one. After i860 
the Italian consul appeared on the scene 



TUNIS 197 



as a new and active force. Here as else- 
where the Franco-German war greatly 
diminished French prestige and influence; 
indeed, during its course an Italian ex- 
pedition against Tunis was at one time 
threatened. 

When in 1878 the plan of the Congress 
of Berlin was broached, it was at first 
doubtful whether France would be repre- 
sented. The contrast between her situa- 
tion then and the one she had held at the 
last European congress, that of Paris in 
1856 after the Crimean war, was ex- 
tremely painful to Frenchmen. To at- 
tend, and at Berlin of all places, seemed a 
humiliation, but not to attend was for 
France to abdicate her right to be con- 
sulted as a great power. She therefore 
accepted the invitation, but on the con- 
dition that there should be no discussion 
of Egypt or of the French protectorate 
of the Holy Places. To this the other 
powers readily assented: a detail which 
did not, it appears, prevent Bismarck 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



from suggesting to England the occu- 
pation of Egypt.* 

Toward the end of the congress, when 
M. Waddington, the French foreign min- 
ister and first plenipotentiary, was in- 
formed of the convention handing over 
Cyprus to England, he was so angered 
that he thought of leaving at once, thus 
probably disrupting the congress. Lord 
Salisbury sought him out and assured 
him that Great Britain, recognizing that 
the situation of France in the Mediter- 
ranean and as the possessor of Algeria 
gave her a right to shape the destinies of 
Tunis, would make no opposition when 
the time came for her to assert that right. 
M. Waddington was also given to under- 
stand, though just how has never been 
revealed, that Germany would have no 

* In his communication announcing the Cyprus Conven- 
tion, Lord Salisbury wrote to M. Waddington, on July 6, 
1878: "I am telling Your Excellency no secret when I say 
that we have been very earnestly pressed, by advisers of no 
mean authority, to occupy Egypt — or at least to take the 
borders of the Suez Canal." Lord Newton, Lord Lyons, ii, 
p. 149. 



TUNIS 199 



objection to the acquisition of Tunis by 
France.* 

This attitude on the part of both Eng- 
land and Germany was somewhat ex- 
traordinary. In 1830 England was so 
bitterly opposed to the French expedition 
to Algiers that she almost went to war 
to prevent it, and for many years after 
she viewed the presence of the French in 
North Africa with intense dislike. For 
her now, without solicitation, to offer 
Tunis to France was a startling reversal 
of policy. We may surmise that it was 
due chiefly to the fact that Tunis seemed 
to be destined to fall soon into the hands 
of some European power, and that Eng- 
land, who just then happened to be on 
quite cordial terms with France, and 
since 1870 no longer feared her as of 
old, was willing to grant her this com- 
pensation for the strengthening of the 
English position in the Mediterranean 

* See G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France conttmporaine, iv, 
p. 388, n. 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



farther to the eastward. It is true that 
England was likewise on excellent terms 
with Italy, but if Italy should get pos- 
session of Tunis, she would hold both 
sides of the Mediterranean at its nar- 
rowest part, and might some day control 
or at least menace the security of a 
passageway which was of more impor- 
tance to Great Britain than the Suez 
Canal itself. From the point of view 
of British interests, it was better that 
the two sides should not be in the hands 
of the same power, even if that power 
were Italy. 

The attitude of Prince Bismarck was 
determined by a different set of consid- 
erations, which again we can only surmise, 
as we lack direct evidence on the subject. 
In 1873 Count Arnim, the German am- 
bassador to Paris, said abruptly to the 
Due Decazes: "I forbid you to take 
Tunis." * There was no good reason 

* Dcnkwurdigkeiun des FursUn Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, ii, 
p. 199. 



TUNIS 



that we know of for the threat at that 
time. Arnim may have gone beyond his 
instructions, as he did more than once, 
or his menace may have been part of the 
policy of bullying which Bismarck then 
followed in much of his dealings with 
France. He cared little for the affairs of 
the Mediterranean, and he had no senti- 
mental predilections as between France 
and Italy; but it was clear to him that if 
either of the two obtained the supremacy 
in Tunis, there would be an estrangement 
between them, and that this would 
accrue to the advantage of Germany.* 
If Italy had been willing from the first 
to court his favor and pay his price, he 
might perhaps have been willing to sup- 
port her claims. Indirect overtures were 

* Sir Charles Dilke, one of the best informed students of 
foreign politics in his day, and under-secretary for foreign 
affairs in the Gladstone cabinet of 1880, later wrote: "It at 
least seems plain that a great deal of offering of other 
people's property took place, and that some of those offers 
were suggested by Prince Bismarck. In one case, at least, 
the same thing was offered to two parties, which is an in- 
genious method of inducing complications which may lead to 
war." Present Position of European Politics, pp. 27, 28. 



TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



made to her by Austria and Germany 
at the Congress of Berlin, but were re- 
jected by Count Corti, who believed 
that they were only intended to embroil 
his country with France, and who had 
been enjoined by his government to 
adopt an attitude of reserve.* It is 
worthy of note that not long before, 
when Crispi was seeking for a German 
alliance, Bismarck had suggested to him 
the taking of Turkish territories on the 
Adriatic, but had made no mention of 
Tunis. He may have believed that Italy, 
even if assured of support, would not 
summon up the resolution to follow his 
advice at the cost of French enmity. He 
may also have believed that, if he could 
launch France into a career of colonial 
expansion, he would not only turn her 
thoughts from Alsace-Lorraine and a war 
of revenge, but also weaken her by divert- 
ing her resources from her tasks in Eu- 

*J. Grabinski, M. Depretis, pp. 255-257. See also the 
appendix by Hans F. Helmolt in Arthur Singer's Geschichte 
des Dreibundes, p. 253. 



TUNIS 203 



rope. Be that as it may, he let M. Wad- 
dington know that he would not stand in 
France's way in Tunisian affairs, and in 
the years that followed he maintained a 
consistently favorable attitude.* 

The temptation thus offered to France 
was considerable, and possibly her states- 
men were mistaken in not yielding to it 
at once. But French public opinion was 
hardly ready yet; the war of 1870 was 
still too recent, the need of rest and re- 
cuperation still too pressing. There was 
suspicion of Italian designs and intrigues, 
but there was little inclination to take any 
adventurous step in order to anticipate 
them. Besides, anything Bismarck ap- 
proved of was feared as perhaps conceal- 
ing a trap. The government at Paris, 
therefore, decided against immediate ac- 
tion, but Waddington, after his return, 
took care to put on record, in a more 
precise and perhaps exaggerated form, 

* There are many indications of this in Hohenlohe, Busch, 
and elsewhere. Bismarck was probably also pleased by the 
reserve France displayed toward certain advances on the part 
of Russia. 



204 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

his conversation with Lord Salisbury, and 
then to submit the paper at London and 
thereby obtain a formal acknowledgment 
that in substance at least his statement 
was correct. 

In Italy the results of the Congress of 
Berlin were received with dissatisfaction. 
Russia, Austria, England, and the Balkan 
states had all obtained something, and 
there were rumors of a concession to 
France, whereas Italy had come out 
empty-handed — and she had got rather 
into the habit of expecting to profit from 
each international crisis. Public opinion 
in the peninsula was discontented and 
restless. There was a renewal of Irredent- 
ist agitation, which put a strain upon the 
relations between Italy and Austria and 
led to a threatening concentration of 
Austrian troops on the frontier. In 
Tunis, just as the English consul, Mr. 
Woods, for twenty years the tireless 
opponent of French influence, was re- 
tired, a new and active Italian one, Sr. 



TUNIS 20s 



Maccio, appeared on the scene in a ship- 
of-war and was installed with military 
pomp. He immediately plunged into a 
struggle with his equally active French 
rival, M. Roustan, and for a couple of 
years the duel between them continued, 
the Bey hearkening sometimes to the one 
and sometimes to the other,* while the 
country fell into ever greater confusion. 
In France and Italy the public followed 
the course of these events with increas- 
ing attention, and violent articles in the 
press heightened the irritation on both 
sides. 

In all this the Italians were following a 
dangerous policy. As the weaker nation 
of the two, it was for their interest to 
bide their time and maintain the status 
quo, not to push matters to an issue. In- 
stead, they angered and alarmed the 
French by their noisy activity, until the 

* Roustan, in obedience to orders from Paris, was trying 
to persuade the Bey into signing a treaty that would make 
him a protege of France. See C. de Freycinet, Souvenirs: 
1878-1893, p. 168. 



206 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

government in Paris, secure in its greater 
strength and in its knowledge that Italy 
would get no outside assistance, deter- 
mined to settle the matter once and 
for all. Taking as its pretext the viola- 
tion of Algerian territory by an unruly 
Tunisian tribe called the Kroumirs, it 
despatched a punitive military expedi- 
tion of 30,000 men. On April 24, 1881, 
the French armies crossed the Tunisian 
frontier, and without opposition pushed 
on to the capital. On May 12, in the 
palace of the Bardo,* the Bey was forced 
to sign a treaty, which, while preserving 
for him the semblance of sovereignty over 
his subjects, deprived him of all real au- 
thority, and turned Tunis into a French 
protectorate. 

In preparing and carrying out this ex- 
pedition, the ministry of Jules Ferry, then 
in power in Paris, had shown itself calm 
and resolute. It had not, however, been 
frank in its explanations to the chamber 

* Or Kasr-el-Said. 



TUNIS 207 



of deputies, nor scrupulous as to truth 
in its preliminary assurances to Italy. It 
also made the mistake of withdrawing a 
large part of the army of occupation too 
soon, and thus giving an opportunity for 
an insurrection, which broke out and ne- 
cessitated the sending of fresh forces and 
some little fighting before it was sup- 
pressed. Nevertheless, in spite of their 
mistakes, Jules Ferry and his colleagues 
deserved well of their country. They 
gained for France a territory which has 
greatly strengthened her position in North 
Africa, and is without question one of 
the most valuable of all her possessions. 
Its progress has been steady and satis- 
factory; it has been admirably governed 
from the first, and it presents perhaps 
the most successful example of French 
colonial administration. But it cost 
France the enmity of Italy for twenty 
years, and the entrance of Italy into an 
alliance against her which lasted for a 
generation. 



208 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

The expedition against Tunis and the 
treaty of the Bardo aroused the Italians 
to frantic protest. Turn where they 
would, they could find no ally — except, 
perhaps, the Turks, who wished to assert 
the Sultan's suzerainty by despatching 
ships to the scene of action, but were 
stopped by the categorical declaration of 
the French that a Turkish fleet would be 
treated as an enemy. The great powers 
remained deaf to Italian appeals. In 
England public opinion was somewhat 
excited, but the hands of the Liberal gov- 
ernment were tied by the benevolent as- 
surances of its Conservative predecessor. 
Germany and Austria remained ostenta- 
tiously indifferent; Russia was more in- 
different still. There was no help for the 
Italians. France was not to be stopped 
except by actual force, and they were too 
weak unaided to risk the arbitrament of 
the sword. 

Throughout the peninsula the resent- 
ment was bitter. The Cairoli ministry, 



RESENTMENT IN ITALY 200 

which had been in power, fell after the 
treaty of the Bardo, a victim to public 
indignation. Italy regarded herself as in- 
jured and humiliated, and she chafed at 
her isolation and weakness. She believed 
that France had cruelly wronged her, and 
her ill-feeling was heightened by a riot, 
accompanied by loss of life, between 
Italians and Frenchmen at Marseilles. 
She had relied in vain on assistance from 
England. When she turned to Germany 
and made fresh approaches for an alli- 
ance, she was met with the frank answer 
that the way to Berlin lay through 
Vienna. 

To Vienna the Italians went accord- 
ingly. As a first step, King Humbert 
himself made a visit there at the end of 
October, 1881, despite the fact that Em- 
peror Francis Joseph, on account of his 
relations with the papacy, had never 
been willing to return in Rome the visit 
King Victor Emmanuel had paid him at 
his capital in 1873. King Humbert was 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 



received with friendly courtesy, but polit- 
ical discussion was avoided. In Decem- 
ber the Italian foreign office instructed 
its ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna to 
begin negotiations for a definite treaty. 
At both places their overtures were re- 
ceived with a calmness that was dis- 
couraging. The truth was that though 
the members of the Austro-German alli- 
ance perceived the advantages of admit- 
ting a new partner to their society, they 
neither trusted nor greatly respected their 
future friend, and they felt that they were 
in a position to wait for advances and to 
make their own terms. Prince Bismarck 
graciously admitted that he was "satis- 
fied" with the attitude of Italy,* and in- 
timated that though he did not think the 
time had yet come for an alliance between 
her and Germany, he should be glad to 
see her reach an agreement with Austria. 
Cheered by this approval, the government 
at Rome continued its negotiations with 

* Chiala, iii, p. 282. 



ITALY AND AUSTRIA 



Vienna, which, however, progressed but 
slowly, as the views of the two parties dif- 
fered in various respects. Several notes 
had to be interchanged, and Bismarck 
presently joined in and shared the dis- 
cussion. 

Italy asked for two things: first, a 
guarantee of the integrity of her territory, 
which should put an end to all danger of 
foreign intervention in behalf of the 
papacy; and, second, support for her po- 
sition and ambitions in the Mediterra- 
nean. The first demand meant for Em- 
peror Francis Joseph and for Catholic 
Austria a sacrifice of sentiment. It was 
a painful thing for them to consecrate the 
possession of Rome by the upstart house 
of Savoy. At last they consented to this, 
chiefly because the provision for a terri- 
torial guarantee, being mutual, bound the 
Italian government to set its face in fu- 
ture against the cry of Italia Irredenta. 
Germany, on her part, cared nothing for 
the territorial claims of the Pope, and 



212 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

had naturally no objections to a provi- 
sion that offered her one more security 
for her possession of Alsace-Lorraine. 

The second Italian demand was refused 
by both Berlin and Vienna. Neither 
had any interest in Italian ambitions in 
the Mediterranean or inclination to put 
themselves out to serve them. The 
French occupation of Tunis did not dis- 
turb them, and Austria at least was 
hostile to any extension of Italian influ- 
ence in the Adriatic. All that Italy could 
get was a vague general promise that the 
allies would support each other within the 
limits of their own interests; and it was 
provided, to reassure Austria, that the 
principle of the status quo should be 
maintained in the Balkans. The casus 
foederis for military support was only to 
become operative when one of the allies 
was attacked by two foreign powers. 
The duration of the treaty was set at five 
years, and it was to be kept secret. 

During the course of the discussions 



CONCLUSION OF THE ALLIANCE 213 

Bismarck had decided to conclude an 
identical treaty between Germany and 
Italy, leaving out only the clause in re- 
gard to the Balkans, which was of no in- 
terest to him. On May 22, 1882, the two 
documents which together constituted 
the Triple Alliance were signed in Vienna, 
the one by Count Kalnoky, foreign min- 
ister for the Dual Empire, and by the 
Italian ambassador, the other by the 
German and Italian ambassadors. Sev- 
eral months elapsed before the rumors 
as to the existence of the agreement were 
fully confirmed and it was officially ad- 
mitted to the world.* 

The formation of the Triple Alliance 
was another triumph for Bismarck. He 
paid almost nothing for it, as he refused 
to interest himself in Italy's Mediterra- 



* For these negotiations, see Chiala, iii, and Fraknoi, "Zur 
Entstehungsgeschichte des Dreibundsvertrags," in the 
Deutsche Revue, December, 1915. For a sharp criticism of 
the ambiguities in the text as at present known, see Fraknoi, 
"Kritik des Dreibundsvertrags," Deutsche Revue, January, 
1916. 



214 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

nean affairs, and the guarantee he gave 
of -the integrity of her territory imposed 
no burden upon Germany. What he ob- 
tained was an important addition to the 
forces of the Austro-German alliance in 
case of a conflict with France and Russia. 
To be sure, his opinion of the Italian army 
was not high, but that it should menace 
the French and not the Austrian frontier 
in case of hostilities counted for a great 
deal.* The Italians had also a navy that 
was reckoned as the third in Europe, and 
could be of service to Germany, whose 
fleet was still inferior to that of France. 
Austria, too, in return for a considerable 
profit sacrificed but little, for she had 
definitely abandoned the idea of regaining 
her lost Italian territories, though she was 
determined to retain those she still pos- 



* "That is what Prince Bismarck meant when he once 
remarked that it was sufficient for him that an Italian cor- 
poral with the Italian flag and a drummer beside him should 
array themselves against the West, i. e., France, and not 
against the East, i. e., Austria." Bulow, Imperial Germany, 
p. 60. See also Poschinger, Also sprach Bismarck, iii, p. 151. 



ADVANTAGES OF THE ALLIANCE 215 

sessed. The Triple Alliance relieved her 
from anxiety on that score and assured 
her against the possibility, which she had 
sometimes feared, of a league between 
Russia and Italy. 

For Italy the advantage of the compact 
was more problematical, even though it 
was she who had solicited it, and though 
it was generally approved throughout the 
peninsula. In its favor could be urged 
that it put an end to the isolation that 
had weighed upon her, and that it made 
her feel she was being treated as a really 
great power. It avenged her for the hu- 
miliation that had been inflicted upon 
her by France, and it assured her against 
French attack in the future. It also 
secured her against Austria, and here we 
have one of the peculiarities of the situa- 
tion. So deep-seated, in spite of what 
was loudly said to the contrary, were the 
causes of hostility between Austria and 
Italy, that many Italians believed that 
the only way for the two countries to 



2i6 THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

remain at peace with one another was 
by becoming allies. Otherwise they must 
be foes. Finally, the friendship of Ger- 
many and Austria meant for Italy at least 
their benevolent neutrality if she should 
launch into colonial enterprises, and per- 
haps their support, if France were to in- 
terfere with her. 

But critics of the alliance then, and still 
more later, asserted that most of these 
advantages were imaginary, since they 
were an insurance against perils that did 
not exist. Granting that France had 
made use of her superior strength to seize 
an object that had been coveted with 
good reason by both countries, there was 
no cause for believing that she meditated 
further aggression.* The French repub- 
lic was becoming increasingly radical and 
anti-clerical, as was proved by its just 
having passed a set of school laws that 
had excited intense anger among good 

* The Italian fears of French designs against Tripoli never 
had any justification. 



ITALY AND THE ALLIANCE 217 

Catholics. To imagine that it or any 
statesman serving it would undertake a 
crusade to restore the temporal authority 
of the Pope was preposterous. If Italy 
was isolated, so were Great Britain and 
Spain and many other powers, and they 
found themselves none the worse for it. 
If her policy was wise and she paid proper 
attention to her army and navy, she was 
strong enough not only to defend herself 
against any likely attack but also to make 
her aid well worth courting by other 
powers. Instead, by joining the Triple 
Alliance she had tied her hands in the 
choice of her friendships, sacrificing that 
of France for many years to come. It 
was useless to declare that the Triple 
Alliance was purely defensive, a league 
of peace to which none could properly 
object. No rhetoric could alter the fact 
that while France had shed her blood for 
the liberation of Italy, now Italy, in so 
far as she was able, had guaranteed to 
Germany the possession of Alsace-Lor- 



218 TEE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

raine. There was nothing for France to 
do but to accept the situation,* but her 
resentment was deep and lasting. This, 
however, did not trouble the Italians. 
They had found new friends and were 
content with them. For better or for 
worse, the Triple Alliance was destined 
to last for a whole generation, during 
which it was to be one of the dominant 
forces in the European world. 

* For an excellent and dignified article on the subject, see 
G. Valbert, "Un publiciste allemand et son plaidoyer en fa- 
veur de la triple alliance," in the Revue des deux mondes, I 
June, 1892, pp. 683-694. 



APPENDIX 

I 

THE AUSTRO-GERMAN ALLIANCE 

The exact terms of the Austro-German al- 
liance were known only to a very few people 
until they were officially published on February 
3, 1888. There may have been supplementary 
conventions at different times, but there is no 
reason for thinking that any changes have been 
made in the original text.* 

Inasmuch as their Majesties the German Emperor, 
King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Austria, King 
of Hungary, must consider it their inalienable duty 
to provide for the security of their Empires and the 
peace of their subjects, under all circumstances; 

Inasmuch as the two Sovereigns, as was the case 
under the former existing Treaty, will be enabled by 
the close union of the two Empires to fulfil this duty 
more easily and more efficaciously; 

Inasmuch as, finally, an intimate cooperation of 
Germany and Austria-Hungary can menace no one, 
but is rather calculated to consolidate the peace of 
Europe on the terms established by the stipulations 
of Berlin; 

*Published in the Berlin Official Gazette, February 3, 1888. 
Translation in British and Foreign State Papers, lxxiii (Lon- 
don, 1889), pp. 270-272. 

219 



220 APPENDIX 



Their Majesties the Emperor of Germany, and the 
Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, while most 
solemnly promising never to allow their purely de- 
fensive Agreement to develop an aggressive tendency 
in any direction, have determined to conclude an al- 
liance of peace and mutual defence. . . . 

Article I. Should, contrary to their hope, and 
against the loyal desire of the two High Contracting 
Parties, one of the two Empires be attacked by Rus- 
sia, the High Contracting Parties are bound to come 
to the assistance one of the other with the whole war 
strength of their Empires, and accordingly only to 
conclude peace together and upon mutual agree- 
ment. 

Article II. Should one of the High Contracting 
Parties be attacked by another Power, the other High 
Contracting Party binds itself hereby, not only not 
to support the aggressor against its high ally, but to 
observe at least a benevolent neutral attitude toward 
its fellow Contracting Party. 

Should, however, in such a case the attacking Power 
be supported by Russia, either by an active coopera- 
tion or by military measures which constitute a menace 
to the Party attacked, then the obligation stipulated 
in Article I of this Treaty, for mutual assistance with 
the whole fighting force becomes equally operative, 
and the conduct of the war by the two High Con- 
tracting Parties shall in this case also be in common 
until the conclusion of a common peace. 

Article III. This Treaty shall, in conformity 
with its peaceful character, and to avoid any mis- 
interpretations, be kept secret by the two High Con- 
tracting Parties, and only be communicated to a 
third Power upon a joint understanding between the 



APPENDIX 221 



two Parties, and according to the terms of a special 
Agreement. 

The two High Contracting Parties venture to hope, 
after the sentiments expressed by the Emperor Alex- 
ander at the meeting at Alexandrovo, that the arma- 
ments of Russia will not in reality prove to be menacing 
to them, and have on that account no reason for making 
a communication; should, however, this hope, con- 
trary to their expectation, prove to be erroneous, the 
two High Contracting Parties would consider it their 
loyal obligation to let the Emperor Alexander know, 
at least confidentially, that they must consider an 
attack on either of them as directed against both. 

In virtue of which the Plenipotentiaries have signed 
this Treaty and affixed their seals. 

Vienna, October 7, 1879. 

(L.S.) H. VII, P. Reuss. 
(L.S.) Andrassy. 



II 
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 

The terms of the Triple Alliance have never 
been published, but Articles I, III, IV, and VII 
are given in the Austrian Red Book, issued in 
191 5.* The last part of Article VII, which refers 
to possible territorial changes in the East, and 
the meaning of which was the chief subject of 
dispute in the negotiations that preceded the 

* Diplomatic Documents concerning the Relations of Austria- 
Hungary with Italy, pp. 179, 189, 190. 



222 APPENDIX 



outbreak of hostilities between Austria and 
Italy, was not in the original treaty. It was 
inserted in 1887, when the treaty was renewed 
for the first time. The first part, on the other 
hand, may well have been in the original treaty, 
as we know there was a provision to this effect. 
Articles I, III, and IV were probably in the 
treaty of 1882; but the wording for III and IV 
cannot have been quite the same, because, as 
stated above, the original Triple Alliance was 
formed by the Austro-German treaty of 1879, 
supplemented in 1882 by separate though sim- 
ilar treaties between Italy and Austria, and 
Italy and Germany. In 1887 there was but one 
document, signed by all the parties to the treaty. 

Article I. The High contracting Parties mu- 
tually promise peace and friendship, and shall not 
enter into any alliance or engagement directed against 
any one of their respective States. 

They bind themselves to proceed to negotiations 
on such political and economic questions of a general 
nature as may arise; and, moreover, promise their 
mutual support within the scope of their own in- 
terests. 

Article III. If one or two of the High Contract- 
ing Parties should be attacked without direct provoca- 
tion on their part, and be engaged in war with two or 
several Great Powers not signatory to this Treaty, 
the casus fcederis shall apply simultaneously to all 
the High Contracting Parties. 

Article IV. In the event that a Great Power not 
signatory to this Treaty should menace the safety 



APPENDIX 223 



of the States of one of the High contracting Parties, 
and that the menaced Party should be forced to make 
war on that Power, the two others bind themselves 
to observe toward their ally a benevolent neutrality. 
Each one of them in that case reserves to herself the 
right to participate in the war, if she should consider 
it appropriate to make common cause with her ally. 

Article VII. Austria-Hungary and Italy, being 
desirous solely that the territorial status quo in the 
near East be maintained as much as possible, pledge 
themselves to exert their influence to prevent all terri- 
torial modification which may prove detrimental to 
one or the other of the Powers signatory to this Treaty. 
To that end they shall communicate to one another 
all such information as may be suitable for their mu- 
tual enlightenment, concerning their own dispositions 
as well as those of other Powers. 

Should, however, the status quo in the regions of 
the Balkans, or of the Turkish coasts and islands in 
the Adriatic and iEgean Seas, in the course of events 
become impossible; and should Austria-Hungary or 
Italy be placed under the necessity, either by the ac- 
tion of a third Power or otherwise, to modify that 
status quo by a temporary or permanent occupation 
on their part, such occupation shall take place only 
after a previous agreement has been made between 
the two Powers, based on the principle of reciprocal 
compensation for all advantages, territorial or other- 
wise, which either of them may obtain beyond the 
present status quo, a compensation which shall satisfy 
the legitimate interests and aspirations of both Par- 
ties. 



INDEX 

Abdul-Aziz, Sultan, 90. 

Abdul-Hamid II, Sultan, 91. 

Adrianople, armistice of, 130. 

Adriatic, the, 184, 202, 212. 

iEgean, the, 92, 126, 132. 

Afghanistan, 135. 

Alabama claims, the, 14. 

Albania, 96, 132, 143, 190. 

Albert, Prince, 16. 

Alexander I, Tsar, 49. 

Alexander II, Tsar, 17, 18, 19, 47, 50, 59 /., 63, 91 /., 

93> 95> 99> i°°> 101, 102, 105 /., in, 115 /., 129/., 

134, 154, 155, 156, 165, 167/., 170, 172, 174/. 
Alexander III, Tsar, 175/. 
Alexander the Great, 65 /. 
Alexandrovo, meeting of emperors at, 167 /. 
Algeria, 193-196, 198. 
Algiers, 193, 199. 

Alsace-Lorraine, 5, 35, 54, 102, 202, 212, 217/. 
American independence, war of, 4. 
Andrassy, Count Julius, 45 /., 85, 93, 97, 99, 103, 114, 

124, 125, 130, 133, 134, 138, 148, 149/., 151, 157, 

165, 166, 169, 170, 172. 
Andrassy note, the, 85, 89. 
Anti-clericalism, in France, 216/. 
Arabs, the, 66, 191. 
Armenia, 143. 
Armenians, the, 141, 147. 

225 



226 INDEX 



Arnim, Count Harry von, 37, 200/. 

Asia Minor, 66. 

Augusta, Empress, 53. 

Ausgleich, the, 21 /. 

Austria-Hungary, 3, 20-23, 35, 41, 42 /., 64, 66 y 67, 
153, 154, 180, 183, 189, 190, 202, 204, 208; the League 
of the Three Emperors, 43-62; the Eastern Question, 
68/., 73-76, 80, 82/., 85 /., 92-105, 111-115, H7> 
123-130, 133-141, 144, 148-151, 176-179; the Aus- 
tro-German alliance, 157-175; admission of Italy to 
the alliance, 179, 209-216. 

Azov, 68. 

Balkan Peninsula, the, see Eastern Question. 

Baltic provinces, the, 164. 

Barbary states, the, 194 /. 

Bardo, treaty of the, 206, 208, 209. 

Bariatinski, 51. 

Batum, 114, note, 132, 137, 140. 

Bayazid, 132, 137. 

Beaconsfield, Earl of, 87, 105, 106, 126, 133, 138, 141, 

147, 173- 

Belgium, 15. 

Belgrade, 177. 

Berlin, Congress of, 130, 136-154, 163, 165, 173, 197/., 
202, 204. 

Berlin, meeting of the three emperors at, 47 /. 

Berlin Memorandum, the, 86, 89, 90. 

Bessarabia, 92, 96/., 114, 132, 137, 140. 

Beust, Count, 39/., 44/.; quoted, 31, note. 

Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 15, 19, 63, 88, 09, 126, 128, 
150, 156, 176, 190, 210, 213 ff.; commanding position 
of, 27 /.; policy of, 28-43; the League of the Three 
Emperors, 43-62; prefers Austria to Russia, 101 /., 



INDEX 227 



112/., 134/.; the Congress of Berlin, 136, 138-141, 

151-154; frames an alliance with Austria, 157-173; 

his estimate of the Italians, 189, 214; suggests to 

England the occupation of Egypt, 197/.; his Tunisian 

policy, 200-203. 
Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Paris, abrogation of, 

16, 19. 
Bonaparte, house of, 36. 
Bosnia, 81, 82, 91, 92, 93, 94, note, 96, 97, 100, 103, 

107, 108, 114, 132, 138, 140, 143, 145, 149, 150 /., 

155, 176, 190. 
Bourbons, the, 36, 188. 
Britain, 191. 
Bulgaria, 80/., 96, 97, 103, 105, 107, 121 /., 131, 132, 

I33> I39> 145; 176, 177- 
Byzantine empire, the, 66, 70. 

Caesar, 181. 

Cairoli, 208. 

Carthage, 191, 193. 

Catherine II, empress of Russia, 81, 159. 

Cavour, 184. 

Central Asia, 135. 

Chambord, Comte de, 188. 

Christians, oppression of, by the Turks, 69 /., 75, 76, 

97/., 131, 139, 147. 
Cisalpine Gaul, 181. 
Civita Vecchia, 188. 
Clericals, in Austria, 172; in France, 10, 185; in Italy, 

186. 
Commune, the, 5. 
Constantinople, 79, 94, note, 96, 106, 1 17, 123, 1 29, 

131, 134, 136. 
Constantinople Conference, the, 107-111. 



228 INDEX 



Convention of Constantinople, see Cyprus Convention. 

Corsica, 185. 

Corti, Count, 202. 

Crimea, the, 100. 

Crimean war, the, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20,42,75, 115, 135, 197. 

Crispi, Francesco, 189 /., 202. 

Croatia, 21. 

Cyprus, 137, 198. 

Cyprus Convention, the, 137 /., 141, 147, 198. 

Dalmatia, 82, 83, 86. 

Decazes, Due, 56, 58, 60. 

Derby, Lord, 107, 117, 133; quoted, 109. 

Dilke, Sir Charles, quoted, 61, note, 201, note. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, see Beaconsfield. 

Dobrudja, the, 132. 

Eastern Question, the, 32, 41, 56, 64, 65-154, 176-179, 

190, 197, 202, 212, 213. 
Eastern Rumelia, 139, 176. 
Egypt, 117, 197, 198. 
Egyptians, the, 120. 
Elizabeth, empress of Russia, 38 /. 
England, n-17, 32, 34, 52, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 173, 198; 

the Eastern Question, 76, 80, 85, 87-90, 98, 100, 

105-m, 117, 123-13 1, 133-141* H4> 146/.; Tunis, 

196, 198, 199/., 204, 208, 209. 
Epirus, 143 /. 
Eugene, Prince, 3. 
Exarchate, Bulgarian, established, 80/. 

Ferry, Jules, 206, 207. 
Fraknoi, cited, 213, note. 

France, 3-9, 30 /., 35"4i> 43, 44» 5^, 53 /•» 85, 128, 
I73> 189, 190, 214, 215, 216/., 218; the war scare of 



INDEX 229 



1875, 55-62, 161; the Eastern Question, 76, 87, 90, 
117, 126; relations with Italy, 179-188; the acquisi- 
tion of Tunis, 190-209, 212, 216. 

Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria, 20, 44, 46, 93, 95, 
97, 102, 104, 106, 114/., 129, 149, 156, note, 166, 
209, 211. 

Frankfort, Parliament of, 25. 

Frankfort, Peace of, 1, 160, 187. 

Frederick, crown prince of Germany, 16, 62. 

Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, 24, 38 /., 159. 

Frederick William IV, king of Prussia, 162. 

French Revolution, the, 4, 25, 182. 

Garibaldi, 184, 185, 187. 

Gastein, 157, 165-168. 

Genoa, 185. 

German Confederation, the, 20, 158, 169. 

Germany, 2/., 23-27, 92, 99, 117, 128, 144, 198/.; Bis- 
marck and his policy, 27-44; the League of the 
Three Emperors, 44-52; the Kulturkampf, 53; alarm 
at the rapid recovery of France, 53 ff.; the war scare 
of 1875, 55-62; loosening of the League of the Three 
Emperors, 62 $.> 84; murder of the German consul 
at Salonica, 90; prefers Austria to Russia, 100 fi., 
112/., 134/.; the Congress of Berlin, 136-142, 151- 
154; estrangement of Russia, 1 54-161; the Austro- 
German alliance, 161-175; relations with Italy, 
188 f.; the question of Tunis, 200-203; tne forma- 
tion of the Triple Alliance, 209-218. 

Giers, de, 176. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, 105, 147, 201, note. 

Gontaut-Biron, Due de, 57. 

Gorchakov, Prince, 51, 60, 63, 86, 93, 94, note, 99, 1 14, 
note, 138, 153, 156. 



230 INDEX 



Great Britain, see England. 

Great Bulgaria, 127, 136, 139, 145, 146/. 

Great Germany, 33, 164, 172. 

Great powers, the, 2-27. 

Great Serbia, 127. 

Greece, 24, 56, 81, 96, 123, 133, 141, 143 /., 146, 147; 

invades Thessaly, 131. 
Guildhall banquet, Lord Beaconsfield's address at, 106. 

Herodotus, 65. 

Herzegovina, 64, 81, 82, 83, 91, 92, 93, 94, note, 96, 

103, 107, 108, 114, 132, 138, 140, 145, 149, 150/., 

176, 190. 
Hohenlohe, Prince, 58, 171. 
Holland, 31, note. 
Holy Alliance, the, 41, 49. 
Holy Places, the, 197. 
Humbert, king of Italy, 209 /. 
Hungary, see Austria-Hungary. 

Ignatiev, Count, 79/., 108. 

India, 4, 87, 135; Indian troops sent to Malta, 133. 

Industrial development of Germany, 33. 

Ischl, meeting at, 44, 46. 

Italia Irredenta, 185, 204, 211. 

Italy, 2, 9/., 35, 42, 52, 87, 92, 117, 148; relations with 
France, 179-188; looks for friends elsewhere, 188- 
191; the question of Tunis, 191-209; enters into alli- 
ance with Austria and Germany, 209-218. 

Jena, 24. 

John Sobieski, king of Poland, 66. 

Kabul, 135, note. 

Kalnoky, Count, 176, note, 213. 



INDEX 231 



Kars, 123, 132, 137, I4°- 
Kroumirs, the, 206. 
Kulturkampfy the, 31 /., 53 /. 

Latin nations, the, 181 /. 

League of the Three Emperors, the, 43-62, 63, 84, 87, 

89, 98, 152, 159, 165, 171, 188. 
Le Flo, General, 59. 
Leipsic, battle of, 159. 
Livadia, 100 f. 
Loftus, Lord, 105. 
Lombardy, 83, 148. 
London, Treaty of (1871), 118. 
London Conference, the, 19, note, 123, 141. 
London protocol, the (March 31, 1877), 115/. 
Lorraine, 30. 

Louis II, king of Bavaria, 171. 
Louis XIV, king of France, 3, 26. 
Louis XV, king of France, 3 /. 
Lyons, Lord, 56. 

Maccio, Italian consul at Tunis, 204 /. 

Macedonia, 127, 139, 143, 147. 

Magenta, battle of, 183. 

Malta, 133. 

Manchester, Lord Salisbury's speech at, 173. 

Manteuffel, General, 99, 166. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 3. 

Marseilles, riot at, 209. 

Mazzini, quoted, 193, note. 

Mediterranean, the, Italian ambitions for empire in, 
10, 186, 192/., 200, 211, 212, 213 /.; England opposes 
Russia's access to, 126; policy of France in, 186, 194, 
198; position of England in, 199 /. 



2 3 2 INDEX 



Mentana, 185. 

Metternich, Prince, 49. 

Milan, Prince, 98, 178. 

Miliutin, General, 168. 

Moltke, von, 39, 50, 51, 55, 58, 171. 

Montenegro, 73, 79, 86, 91, 95, 96, 97, 107, 1 13 /., 116, 

132, 140, 143, 145 /., 177- 
Morier, Sir Robert, quoted, 63, note. 
Morocco, 193, note, 195. 
Moscow, Panslavic Congress at, 78; the Tsar's address 

at (November 10, 1876), 106/. 
Murad V, Sultan, 90 /. 

Naples, speech of Crispi at, 190, note. 
Napoleon I, II, 25, 27, 41, 159; the Napoleonic em- 
pire, 4. 
Napoleon III, 1, 4, 15, 23, 39, 182/., 186, 187, 195. 
Nationality, development of the consciousness of, 77. 
Nelson, II. 

,Nice, annexation of, 10, 184. 
Nicholas I, Tsar, 49, 162. 
Nish, 178, note. 

North Africa, 66, 19 1-209, 212, 216. 
North America, 3 /. 
Novibazar, district of, 140, 146, 177. 

Orleans, house of, 36. 
Orthodox, the, 69, 70, 72. 
Orthodox Serbs, the, 151. 
Osman Pasha, 121, 122, 127. 
Ottoman empire, the, see Turkey. 
Ottoman Turks, the, 66. 



Palmerston, Lord, 14. 

Panslavism, 78^"., 154, 164/., 173, 182. 



INDEX 233 



Panteutonism, 182. 

Paris, Congress of (1856), 123, 141, 142, 197. 

Paris, taken by the allies, 159; by the Germans (1871), 
26, 129; by the national troops, from the Com- 
mune, 5. 

Paris, Treaty of (1856), 76, 97, 109, 126. 

Passarowitz, Peace of, 67. 

'Peace with honor/ 141, 146. 

Persia, 65. 

Peter the Great, 68, 69, 78. 

Pirot, 178, note. 

Plevna, battles at, 121, 122, 127. 

Poland, 155; the Polish insurrection of 1863, 14, 16, 18, 

79- 
Portugal, 196. 
Prussia, see Germany. 

Radowitz, Count von, 56, 57, 58, 99, 163. 

Reichstadt, interview at, 95 ff. y 189. 

Reuss, Prince, 94, note, 172. 

Revertera, Count Friedrich, cited, 93, note, 94, note. 

Revolution of 1830, the, 41. 

Richelieu, 3. 

Roman Catholic church, the, 73; the temporal author- 
ity of the Pope, 2, 180, 183, 186, 188, 211, 217; Fran- 
cis Joseph and the papacy, 209; the Kulturkampf in 
Germany, 31 /., 53 /. 

Roman empire, the, overthrown by the Germans, 23; 
modern Italy and the Roman imperial traditions in 
the Mediterranean, 192 /. 

Rome, taken by the Gauls, 181; subdues western Asia, 
66) occupied by the French, 4, 185; acquired by Italy 
as a capital, 1, 9, 180, 186, 211. 

Roustan, French consul at Tunis, 205. 



234 INDEX 



Royalists, French, 1 88. 

Rubicon, the, 181. 

Rumania, 118/., 132, 133, 134, 140. 

Russia, 3, 17/., 34/., 41, 42, 63, 64, 159, 160-163, 165, 
169, 170 /., 189, 204, 208, 214; the League of the 
Three Emperors, 43-62; the Eastern Question, 68- 
154; resentment toward Germany, 154-157; the Bal- 
tic provinces, 164; meeting of Alexander II and 
William I at Alexandrovo, 166 f.\ attitude toward 
the Austro-German alliance, 173-176. 

Sadowa, battle of, 21, 30. 

Safet Pasha, 109 /. 

St. Sophia, cathedral of, 70. 

Salisbury, Lord, 108, 133, 138, 173, 198, 204. 

Salonica, 148; murder of the French and German con- 
suls at, 90. 

Salzburg, 46. 

San Stefano, Treaty of, 131 /., 139, 145, 177. 

Sardinia, 193, note. 

Savoy, annexation of, 10, 184. 

Savoy, house of, 184, 211. 

Schleswig-Holstein question, the, 14. 

Schneider, German teacher of Alexander II, 47, note. 

Schonbrunn, treaty of alliance signed at, 93 /. 

Sebastopol, fall of, 13. 

Seljuk Turks, the, 66. 

Seraievo, 151. 

Serbia, 73, 75, 79, 80, 81, 91, 95, 96, 97/., 100, 105, 107, 
113 /., 118, 123, 132, 133, 140, 145 /., 151, 177/. 

Serfdom, abolition of, in Russia, 17, 115. 

Seven Years' war, the, 38. 

Shuvalov, 162, 163. 

Sicily, 193, note, 196. 



INDEX 235 



Skobelev, General, 135, note. 

Slavophilism, 77. 

Solferino, battle of, 183. 

South Slavs, 22, 148. 

Spain, 3, 181, 191, 195, 196, 217. 

Suez Canal, the, 88, 117, 198, note, 200. 

Syria, 66. 

Talleyrand, 31. 

Tartars, the, 69. 

Thessaly, 131, 143. 

Thiers, President, 8, 37. 

Trent affair, the, 14. 

Trentino, the, 20. 

Tripoli, 195, note, 216, note. 

Tunis, 191-209, 212, 215. 

Turkey, 64, 149, 155, 190, 191, 196, 202, 208; rise and 
decline of, 66-75; tne Crimean war, 75/.; increasing 
corruption and misgovernment, 76; religious, racial, 
and diplomatic causes of the war of 1877-78, 76- 
116; the, Russo-Turkish war, 1 16-13 8; the Cyprus 
Convention, 137/., 147; the Congress of Berlin, 138- 
141; contrast between 1856 and 1878, 142 ff.', 
estrangement of England, 147/. 

United States, the, 13. 

Valbert, G., cited, 218, note. 

Vandal conquest of Africa, the, 191. 

Venetia, 20, 21, 83, 148. 

Venice, 82, 183, 189. 

Versailles, proclamation of the German empire at, 

1, 26. 
Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy, 52, 187, 188, 209. 



236 INDEX 






Victoria, Queen, 16, 62, note, 87. 
Vienna, defeat of the Turks at, 66, 68. 
Vienna Exhibition of 1873, the, 51. 
Villafranca, Peace of, 183. 

Waddington, 191, note, 198, 202 /. 

War indemnity, French, 5, 7, 35, 53 /.; Turkish, 132, 

140/. 
War scare of 1875, the, 55-62, 161. 
Waterloo, 12, 24. 
Wellington, II. 

Werder, General von, 100 /., 102, 163. 
William I, emperor of Germany, I, 18, 19, 23, 28, 44, 

46, 50, 60, 61, 99> 155 /•> I57> I59> 165, 166, 167, 168, 

170, 171, 174, 176- 
Woods, English consul at Tunis, 204. 



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